Enabling Collaboration and Synthesis

The Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) aims to build the resilience of vulnerable populations in climate change hotspots by building new knowledge and capacities to support better informed policy and practice. The program connects more than 450 researchers and practitioners from over 40 organizations. These CARIAA networks are organized into four consortia, whose members collaborate around their own common program of work. Beyond each of these four consortia, CARIAA creates spaces, processes, and opportunities for collaboration and synthesis between and across the four consortia. When the goals of a research program encapsulate transdisciplinary and collaborative synthesis on a scale as large as CARIAA’s, there is only one way to treat the unfolding process: to learn by experimentation. At this midpoint in the program, we share what we have learned so far about creating conditions for collaboration and synthesis activities to grow.