GovClimServices focuses on the analysis of two key relationships identified as key challenges to the governance of climate services in Maharashtra/India and elsewhere; i) the coordination between multiple public and non-public actors; and, ii) the translation and transfer challenge of climate knowledge to local users.

Regarding the first issue, the project will focus on how the climate services are structured and coordinated between different hydro-metrological service agencies (public, private, civil society) and various, fragmented sector agencies at multiple levels (agriculture, disaster risk management) and how these service providers interact with various end-users in policy and everyday service provision (farmers and herders, local authorities). Systems that are mainly public in character will be compared with systems that are evolving combine public-private and civil society agencies (including open access systems). This will allow us to understand the policy linkages and possible ‘disconnects’ between how diverse institutional and policy frameworks (public vs. private) operate “top down” in their encounters with local actors “bottom up”. Regarding the second issue, we will analyse how and what type of relevant scientific knowledge and information on climate/weather risk and vulnerability is translated and transferred through the different institutions and knowledge networks, and how these networks condition the processes of local learning and local risk analysis within the different tiers of the climate services structure. This will contribute to a better understanding of the ‘knowledge’ disconnect, and the ‘participation’ and ‘trust’ disconnect observed in earlier research between service providers and their framing (and reframing) of scientific climate knowledge in encounters with the farmers’ more experience-based and tacit knowledge.