Open AccessSupporting communities of practice as a strategy to accelerate uptake of environmental science for climate action: TV weathercasters as a case study
Author(s) -
Edward Maibach
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
environmental research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.37
H-Index - 124
ISSN - 1748-9326
DOI - 10.1088/1748-9326/abcfe2
Subject(s) - action (physics) , climate change , heuristic , climate science , root (linguistics) , computer science , environmental planning , management science , political science , environmental science , engineering , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , biology
Advantageous new ideas and practices have a vexing track record of taking root slowly, if at all. Identifying or creating, and then supporting, communities of practice is a promising approach to enhancing the likelihood that science-based environmental science knowledge will be applied to solve societal problems. A community of practice, simply put, is a group of individuals who have shared interests and problems related to a specific topic. This article provides a brief overview of what communities of practice are, and how they might be embraced as a strategy to accelerate the development of climate change solutions. The approach is illustrated with a brief case study of Climate Matters, a highly successful program designed to support TV weathercasters as local climate change educators. It concludes with a heuristic to guide future efforts at supporting communities of practice.