Unlocking innovation in climate services through meaningful co-production for nature-based solutions

Co-production is essential for creating climate services that are both usable and useful for effective climate action. Yet tokenistic, expert-driven supply-side approaches persist. We investigate the gap between users’ ‘expressed’ needs (the climate services they currently use) and their ‘felt’ needs (the new climate services they desire) for nature-based solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on interviews with over 500 respondents at seven case sites, we found a 39–53% overlap between current use and desired need priorities (Cohen’s Kappa 0.4–0.5, p < 0.0001). Stakeholder type did not predict use–need overlap (rate ratios 0.95–0.99; p > 0.08), though location did (0.88–1.27). While nearly all (96%) respondents reported using climate services for nature-based solutions, these services require strengthening by integrating different knowledge systems and improving accessibility, timeliness, know-how, trust, and climate-change literacy. Meaningful co-production is needed to create new services, including integrated climate-risk information for local to subnational decisions and community-based and digital sharing channels. Our results show the insufficiency of tokenistic co-production or supply-side processes and highlight the importance of inclusive, locally led co-production.