Thirteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

SERVIR is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) collaborative project, addressing environmental and developmental issues, including climate change impacts and adaptation using cutting edge technologies such as satellite-based earth observations (EO). From the Science and Technology Studies (STS) lens, I consider its core service planning approach and related practices by SERVIR-Mekong, a SERVIR hub hosted by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center working on Lower Mekong at regional and country level. The focus of the paper is detailing ongoing efforts on managing disasters and climate change impacts, while developing adaptation strategies such as droughts and floods using EO by actors such as the Mekong River Commission (MRC) . Our findings support the value of local to global partnerships, and the key requirement of sensitivity to user needs which service planning provides, when involving adoption and adaptation of technologies to the operational level. The development of these ongoing services also benefited from scientific research which dovetailed service planning and fostered innovations while meeting user needs and operational requirements. Issues with adoption occurred at various stages of service delivery, which include lack of resources, but these were navigated through regular user engagement and capacity building activities for sustainable uptake of these services.