Drought Uncertainty: Co-creating Climate Adaptation in Canada, the UK and Germany

Europe’s 2025 heatwave transformed the phrase “sleepwalking to drought” from a warning into reality. Climate adaptation is shaped not only by hydrological change but also by deep uncertainty in climate models, governance pathways, and social priorities. We compare three place-based art-science collaborations in the UK, Germany, and Canada to explore how co-creative methods make climate uncertainty legible, discussable, and actionable for water decision-making.

Drawing on social impact theory from engineering design, particularly frameworks that foreground well-being, inequality, demographics, and identity, we treat adaptation as a social process shaped by power, culture, and participation, not merely a technical challenge. Across cases, community-created drama functions as a boundary method, translating abstract or contested knowledge into shared interpretive spaces.

In the UK, community theatre engages intergenerational groups to frame drought adaptation as lived experience. Co-created scripts transform hydrological abstractions into narratives of care, identity, and solidarity. They highlight who acts under scarcity and uncertainty, how priorities are negotiated, and how resilience is socially distributed. In Germany, groundwater recharge modelling faces sharply diverging climate projections that depart from historical observations. Ensemble outputs from bias-corrected simulations feed into a converge-diverge “double diamond” process, where dramaturgical methods help communities interpret uncertainty, cluster extremes, and co-develop water strategies with international partners. In Canada, uncertainty centres on competing development pathways: upstream high-emission energy production versus large-scale freshwater delta restoration. Co-created scripts and boundary objects surface tensions between economic value and environmental and cultural continuity, underscoring the need to move beyond accessibility toward institutional responsiveness.

Methodologically, we argue that co-created dramaturgical practices operate as social infrastructure for climate adaptation, enabling collective problem framing, ethical engagement with uncertainty, and action across competing demands. Rather than reducing uncertainty, these approaches render it governable, supporting resilience and prosilience in water-stressed futures.

Art’s role is both connective and resistant, linking hydrology and social science while guarding against tokenisation. In the UK, the aim is co-benefit: resilience that strengthens local capacity while addressing questions of place, class, and heritage. In Germany, water discussions pair knowledge creation with action through plural stories and datasets, synthesising priorities, prototyping solutions, and refining strategies. For Canada, the call is for active restoration within and beyond the river delta. Local communities champion internal restoration through channel clearing and cultural burning, while upstream restoration requires large-scale partnerships and willingness to sacrifice economic value for environmental and cultural continuity.

Across cases, key tensions include disciplinary silos, limited resources, and the risk of optics over substance. We show that co-designed hydrological modelling, paired with iterative and accessible feedback loops, enables appropriately scaled analytical depth and ethical engagement with uncertainty. These methods foster shared climate dramaturgy for resilient and prosilient water futures.