Stakeholder engagement in agro-climate service planning

The impacts of weather, climate variability and climate change on agricultural production underline the increasing importance of actionable agro-climatic services. Transitioning from supply-driven provision of climate and agricultural information to demand-driven agro-climate services (ACS) at scale cannot be accomplished in a top-down manner but requires the engagement of diverse stakeholders in all phases of ACS development and implementation. This requires methods and tools to handle the diversity and dynamics of interactions between relevant stakeholders, including during the pre-financing stage of the ACS. We propose a transparent method to identify and engage stakeholders in the ACS planning phase and demonstrate this method as part of the socio-economic development planning process in Dien Bien, Vietnam. We find that considering stakeholder attributes such as availability, experience, gender, expertise, benefits and costs for each stakeholder, interest, influence, relevance, and attitude, combined with insights about the socio-economic development planning processes, is crucial for the engagement of stakeholders. We also find that facilitating collaborative interaction between ACS stakeholders is pivotal in supporting the planning of demand-driven ACS. Our methodology for engaging stakeholders is transferrable to designing and planning other interventions in complex systems.