Please find below the
Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' comments
Finalist - Do Not Advance
SUBJECT: Climate CoLab Judging Results
Proposal: Ancient Bio-Indicator Recalibrated by Modern Remote Sensing for Timeless Almanac
Contest: Anticipating Climate Change in the Pamir Mountains
Thank you for participating in the 2015 Climate CoLab Anticipating Climate Change in the Pamir Mountains contest, and for the time you spent in creating and revising your entry.
The Judges have strongly considered your proposal in this second round of evaluation, and have chosen to not advance it as a Finalist for this contest.
We, the Judges and contest Fellows, are truly grateful for your contribution to the Climate CoLab and for your commitment to address climate change.
We encourage you to keep developing your work. Transfer it to the Proposal Workspace to re-open it, make edits, add collaborators, and even submit it into a future contest. You can do so by logging into your account, opening your proposal, selecting the Admin tab, and clicking “Move proposal”.
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Keep up the great work. And thank you again for being a part of this mission to harness the world’s collective efforts to develop and share innovative climate change solutions.
2015 Climate CoLab Judges
[Additional comments from the Judges]
Judges' Comments
The revised proposal is much improved and addresses issues which could have detracted the efforts. The main strength of the proposal is in the active participation of the local population in the project. The proposed tasks are feasible and will require active involvement of the team, especially at site.
There are a lot of strengths in this proposal, and the idea of publishing a dual almanac does promote the idea of dual fluency. The proposal is well researched and extremely well written, and the plan for connecting with partners shows evidence of relevant experience.
Establishing a CBO can take quite a bit of energy- the team may want to talk with the community to see if there is an existing organization or base that can be used or to form a loss affiliation from established groups/religious/secular government etc. that want to work on the project- not taking energy from the project itself.
The weakness of the proposal is the lack of a clear research outcome but considering the potential impact from indigenous participation the proposal is among the strongest in the contest. The chief concern, though, is that there is no opportunity for dialogue in the chief output of the proposal – the almanac. While space will be provided to annotate, what opportunity is there to share those annotations and build something greater? Without this feedback, there isn’t much opportunity to iterate: How will the second year of the calendar be different than the first? Also, a feedback loop would make the project much more participatory by providing people an opportunity to work with the researchers in producing something of mutual benefit. Without that, it feels like this is primarily a research effort with an output picked for people, not with them. It would be stronger if there was more opportunity for people in the region to contribute to the design of the project and its product, rather than only contribute toward an already defined outcome.
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' ratings
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Judges'' comments
SUBJECT: Your proposal has been selected as a Semi-Finalist!
Congratulations! Your proposal, Ancient Bio-Indicator Recalibrated by Modern Remote Sensing for Timeless Almanac in the Anticipating Climate Change in the Pamir Mountains contest, has been selected to advance to the Semi-Finalists round.
You will be able to revise your proposal and add new collaborators if you wish, from now until the revision deadline (June 18, 11:59pm [EDT]).
Judges' feedback are posted under the "Evaluation" tab of your proposal. Please incorporate this feedback in your revisions, or your proposal may not be advanced to the Finalists round. We ask you to also summarize the changes that you made in the comment section of the Evaluation tab.
At the revision deadline, your proposal will be locked and considered in final form. The Judges will undergo another round of evaluation to ensure that Semi-Finalist proposals have addressed the feedback given, and select which proposals will continue to the Finalists round. Finalists are eligible for the contest’s Judges Choice award, as well as for public voting to select the contest’s Popular Choice award.
Thank you for your great work and again, congratulations!
Contest Judges
Judges' Feedback:
The first step of the project is premised on creating a community based organization. The challenges of individuals parachuting into a community and setting up such an organization should be examined in a much more critical fashion.
The key features of the proposal, viz. a community based org (CBO) and a Body Calendar Almanac (BDO), are appealing. The tasks of the CBO in phenological monitoring and documentation are essential and in building an inventory of the historical bio-indicators. The BCA as a wall calendar is a practical approach and more detailed efforts to define its content should be a focus of the project. An active engagement of the farmers in building the calendar and frequent updates to reflect their inputs would be essential for it to become a dependable resource.
I am not qualified to comment properly on this proposal, but I do like the creativity of the approach. The major issue is that it is not obvious it will have any significant impact.
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 Simon Riley Jun 17, 2015 04:22  | Proposal creator
Firstly, we would like to express our appreciation to the panel of judges for taking the time to review our proposal and for offering us their feedback.
Regarding "the challenges of individuals parachuting into a community", the following revisions were made:
1. The section entitled "What Are the Proposals Costs?" now includes a more critical assessment of the challenges and opportunities of taking the approach outlined in our proposal, along with references to a number of publications dedicated to best management practices for the establishment of multi-stakeholder platforms in agricultural development initiatives.
2. The section entitled "Who Will Take These Actions?" now includes a brief reference to the organization members' past professional experience and other qualifying credentials.
Regarding the observation that this proposal lacks a clear, significant impact, the section entitled "What Are Other Key Benefits?" has been updated to highlight the specific benefits which we believe this effort has to offer for participating communities, backing this assertion with reference to a very similar project which employed the use of remote sensing technology, ground-based meteorological measurements and traditional knowledge to improve the resilience of reindeer husbandry in the Russian Arctic.
Finally, we wholeheartedly agree with the judges that "more detailed efforts to define [the BCA's] content should be a focus of the project", but felt that it would be misguided to place too much emphasis on defining the precise content with any greater specificity than we already have at this stage in the project's development. The reason for this being that to approach community engagement with a pre-defined, overly-narrow conception of what the outcome of the efforts should be risks undermining the "active engagement of the farmers in building the calendar and frequent updates to reflect their inputs", which we fully understand "would be essential for it to become a dependable resource".
Thanks again for your contributions.
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