Rosalind Cornforth: Walking the Walk

Posted by Ruth Chapman

This month we were very glad to be joined by Rosalind Cornforth of Reading University and the Walker Institute. The Walker Institute is the WCRP My Climate Risk hub and is an interdisciplinary climate research institute. Her work focuses on developing climate resilient societies and works between NGOs, governments and stakeholders to achieve this. The vision of the walker institute is captured in this TEDx talk.

Rosalind spoke briefly about her career to date and the interesting path she has taken to her current role. Her career started at ESSO, before returning to academia for her phd and eventually ended up working with policy makers in Africa. It was here that she realised the importance of doing and communicating the science that is most relevant to the policy makers and politicians implementing change. From here, her work focused more on interdisciplinary work, and answering the questions most important to those being worst impacted by climate changes. The problem can be well summarised with the quote:  “You can give us the science but what do you expect us to do with it?”

The process of implementing this was presenting in three steps:

• Our research must be led my national stakeholders and address local priorities
• This involves; establishing common ground and shared understanding of issues and then recognising that climate does not respect national boarders.
• Influencing as an honest broker and ensuring systemic and sustainable impact as an ‘outsider’ requires significant effort
• As a researcher, this regularly requires stepping outside of our comfort zone

Some other key points that were highlighted for impactful research were;

• Listening before speaking
• Learning before doing
• Partnering before doing
• Clear pathways to policy action- starts where decisions are made, not where research ends.
• Enable policy action through decision-centric approaches
• Put local experts at the centre

A quote from Sir Gilbert Walker who discovered the Southern Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation, the so-called Father of seasonal forecasting, summarises this problem of interdisciplinary research with the following;

“There is today always aa risk that specialists in two subjects, using language full of words that are unintelligible without study, will grow up not only without knowledge of each others’ work, but will also ignore the problems which require mutual assistance.”

Thank you to Rosalind for coming to speak to us, and everyone who attended online and in person.