Climate risks are increasingly recognised as complex, shaped by interacting social, ecological, and climatic dynamics. Yet, many approaches to climate risk assessment and adaptation planning remain hazard-centric, limiting their ability to characterise how interacting dynamics create impacts, and how these are navigated in practice. At the same time, data visualisations are typically treated as outputs of analysis rather than as tools that shape knowledge co-production.
In this talk, we present an approach where data visualisations were used to co-create risk and adaptation knowledge for climate-resilient development pathways. Working with 180 smallholder farmers in Makueni County, Kenya, we conducted focus group discussions to understand how climate change creates challenges, map aspirations for the future, and explore how farmers want to move from challenges towards aspirations.
We then developed data visualisations that characterise how hazards interact with drivers of vulnerability to create cascading impacts across farmers’ lives and livelihoods. We then visualised adaptation and development responses identified by farmers, showing how these can support transitions towards future aspirations.
Returning visualisations to participants, we facilitated co-design sessions to refine system dynamics, sequence adaptation options, and identify where vulnerabilities and opportunities co-evolve to shape pathways.
This work shows data visualisations can function not only as communication outputs, but as tools for co-creating actionable knowledge for climate-resilient development pathways. By making dynamics such as feedbacks and leverage points for interventions legible to researchers and farmers, visualisations supported the identification of locally relevant and preferred actions, and revealed how interconnected risks shape adaptation decisions and pathways.