Climate change is a crucial issue in Trung Huu Nguyen’s home country of Vietnam, particularly its coastal cities. But, says the 2017 IDRC Research Award Recipient, most of the research on climate change perceptions focuses on rural farmers and overlooks urban residents. 

“Perceptions of climate change are important because they influence behaviours and response, and contribute to informed policy decisions,” says Nguyen. Working in the coastal cities of Hoi An and Nha Trang, he found that residents not only recognized impacts of climate change such as extreme heat and flooding, but had adapted in various ways, including diversifying their income-generation activities.

As Nguyen’s earlier experiences and education focused on rural communities and livelihoods, his fieldwork allowed him to gain better insight into the impacts of climate change on urban residents who depend on tourism. For them, it could mean a better and longer business season, he says.

To enable residents to adapt to future changes, he concluded that greater efforts should be made to inform them of predicted impacts and incorporate their concerns into urban and climate policies.

Working at IDRC was Nguyen’s “first professional experience abroad,” which allowed him to develop professional networks and hone his analytical skills, including in gender analysis. “It was an excellent opportunity to enhance my knowledge and skills for research on climate change impacts and adaptation strategies to reduce climate risk,” he says.

Nguyen also credits the research award with broadening his view of research for development. “Before IDRC, I worked mainly for development programs and projects insofar as they contributed to the goals of the projects, rather than global perspectives,” he says. At IDRC, he learned that programs can contribute to broader development goals.

Technical solutions aren’t sufficient to guarantee the success of small-scale renewable energy projects in Brazil. But, says 2016 IDRC Research Award recipient Catherine Gucciardi Garcez, that’s where the focus has largely been. “Issues of social inclusion and governance — and enabling local communities to participate in those initiatives — are not as strong,” she says.

“I understand the potential of renewables and some of these technologies are laudable solutions,” says Gucciardi Garcez. “My research shows that the developers were well-intentioned, but they didn't spend enough time getting buy-in from the local community or in getting the community to participate enough to create local ownership. Without engaging the proper stakeholders, we’re at risk of not achieving the kind of impact we’d like to have or that’s needed,” she says.

An engineer, Gucciardi Garcez completed both her master’s and doctorate in environmental policy in Brazil. “I had been living outside of Canada for five to six years before coming to IDRC,” she says. “This was my first professional experience back in Canada after a long time. It's been quite helpful in gaining a professional network, which I had lost.”

Graduate education should challenge traditional modes of learning and create new knowledge. In the field of ecohealth, however, that doesn’t always happen, says Mathieu Feagan, a 2014 IDRC Research Award recipient.

Feagan set out to examine how the knowledge of graduate students, young professionals, and early career academics in Canada and Latin America could be better applied to contribute to ecological sustainability and human health. This inquiry built on his PhD research about how current academic training and research often disregard the experiences and skills of experts-to-be and therefore maintain the status quo.

His IDRC project’s working groups, Feagan says, were made up of “incredibly thoughtful people committed to social-environmental justice.” But, he says, “our position as graduate students, interns, and short-term contract holders puts us, in some sense, in competition for a limited number of jobs, few of which are actually designed to support our aspirations for social-environmental justice. Learning about the different ways that we each come to terms with this and take up action in the North and the South, will continue to be a powerful experience for me,” he says.

The gap between research and policy can be wide, but 2014 IDRC Research Award recipient Jyotiraj Patra has identified three steps for bridging it: trust, time, and transition. “I came to IDRC with limited understanding of the complexity around science-policy interface,” he says. “My mentor’s guidance exposed me to the political economy dimension of this interface. This helped me refine my research.”

Patra sought to understand how research could influence policies to reduce flooding risks in India. Through fieldwork, he learned that building trust between the local and policy communities is essential. Timing is also crucial: you have to seize the moment — a disaster or a change in government, for example — when there is an appetite for research. The third challenge is to maintain that openness to new ideas, he says. “This is all the more critical when the frequency and severity of natural hazards such as floods and cyclones are on the rise, as they are in India.”

“Each day at IDRC was filled with new energy and passion to work,” he says. “I have always been excited about knowledge-into-action linkages. My stint at IDRC amplified this passion.”