In the first semester of this year, members of the Community of Practice on Climate Risk came together virtually and shared once more their expertise, experiences and insights within the topic of climate risks. The event was focused on innovative approaches and best practices in the interaction between science, project implementation and practice reality.

The event started off in the morning with two presentations of Stefan Kienberger (Austrian Meteorological and Geophysical Service (ZAMG)/University of Salzburg) on the operationalization of Climate Risks assessments with the example of Bangladesh followed by an input of Saskia Werners (United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security) on understanding risk, change and recovery and their different perceptions.
Take aways from these two inputs included the cognition that we need to move from climate services to climate risk services, to acknowledge that people are not good in recognizing change and that the interplay of new risk settings and own responses and reactions also implicate to question so-though established systems.

Afterwards, further colleagues from the Community of Practice contributed to the discussion on climate risk management by sharing their experiences:

1. Wiebke Foerch (GIZ, Sustainable Agriculture/Rural Development), Marc Zebisch and Kathrin Renner (both Eurac Research) presented the CRISP Tool (Climate Risk Planning & Managing Tool for Development Programmes in the Agriculture & Food Sector).

2. The second input was provided by Anne Weltin, Sebastian Homm and Stefanie Springorum (GIZ, Global Programme on Policy Advice for Climate Resilient Economic Development (CRED)) who shared experiences from their programme on the topic of enhancing policymakers’ understanding of climate risk with macroeconomic models.

3. Afterwards Pablo Borges de Amorim (GIZ Brazil, CSI) presented the experiences and lessons learned of the project “Enhancing Climate Services for infrastructure investments (CSI)” from two case studies in southern Brazil where the concept of climate services was applied to assess climate risks for transmission lines and a huge port.

4. The fourth input was provided by Dennis Eucker (GIZ Brazil, Programme ProAdapta) and colleagues from ZAMG and NIRAS/IP-Consult presented their work from CoP CR Workstream 3 and the elaboration of a climate risk communication guideline that will be launched soon.

During the afternoon session, the Community of Practice welcomed external guests such as Lorena Santamaria and Markus Repnik from the WMO SOFF to learn about innovating finance for weather and climate observations. Afterwards Belko Abdoul Aziz Diallo (Head of Data Management Department) from the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) presented the ongoing work of WASCAL. Furthermore, Jane Olwoch (Executive Director) from the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) followed-up with a brief presentation on the work of SASSCAL.

We hereby want to thank all colleagues that contributed to this event and enriched the discussion with their expertise! We look forward to our next event of the Community of Practice Climate Risk!