Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) represents a partnership of 22 organisations funding, undertaking and using research to help mitigate or avoid the worst impacts of environmental change.

LWEC aims to connect natural, engineering, economic, social, medical, cultural, arts, and humanities researchers with policy-makers, business, public, and other key stakeholders. In 2010, the partnership, supported by Sciencewise, commissioned OPM to run a Citizens’ Advisory Forum to ensure that public input was considered within LWEC’s strategic decision making.

18 Forum members were recruited from the Bristol area, with the Forum meeting three times. The three sessions considered research into flood risk management, adaptation to climate change, and decision making in response to climate change challenges.

Although some LWEC partners interviewed as part of the evaluation had not used the results at the time of the evaluation being published, others had already either used the results or had clear plans for doing so. One consistent point was the importance of feeding back (to public participants and others) that LWEC had listened to the results of the Forum and taken them into account.

This dialogue was delivered by OPM and evaluated by Shared Practice.