ateam - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

ATEAM final report Section 5 and 6 (2001-2004) 44
the consideration of the interactions between land use, climate and policy; and,
the need to bridge the gap between the current modelling scales and the scales relevant to policy
and decision-makers.
The 3 rd and final Stakeholder Workshop, May 2004, Potsdam, Germany
The final workshop was attended by 13 Stakeholders, 12 ATEAMers and 3 observers. In contrast to all
other events, this time only accommodation and meals, but not the travelling costs were paid for
stakeholders, due to budget constraints. We consider it a very positive signal that 13 stakeholders paid
their own travel to participate in this final event. As before, ATEAMers had an internal meeting prior to
the event to finalise preparation and harmonise the communication strategy.
The aim of the final workshop was to present and discuss near final results on potential impacts of
global change on ecosystem services and sectors, sectoral adaptive capacity and resulting vulnerability.
Furthermore, the ATEAM digital atlas of these results, the so-called mapping tool was presented and
discussed.
In view of the potential impacts of global change on ecosystem services as calculated by ATEAM,
sectoral adaptation was considered and debated. The ATEAM mapping tool was demonstrated and
stakeholders commented on how this could be improved. Stakeholders usually praised the ATEAM
goal, approach and preliminary results. The information on potential impacts per ecosystem service per
se was judged more useful however than an aggregated indicator of vulnerability (including a macroscale
indicator on adaptive capacity). This suggests that vulnerability as a concept and its quantification
may be of more scientific than social relevance. It could indicate that stakeholders are very well aware
of the adaptive capacity of their sector and need primarily to understand the risk their activities face in
the context of global change.
The need to include explicitly policy alternatives and their potential effect on ecosystem services, and to
explore ways to attach probabilities to specific scenarios was highlighted. More transparent
documentation was asked so as to understand adequately how the results were obtained and thus
better judge their meaningfulness. This is especially important since the ATEAM mapping tool will
potentially store 2500 maps. The mapping tool in itself was judged interesting and innovative, although
stakeholders did not think they could use it in their daily decision-making and/or management work.
Efforts to synthesise the information gained by the maps would be valuable and would increase the
dissemination and use of the ATEAM results.
Sectoral meetings
Agriculture and biomass energy, February 2002, Paris, France
Participants: 3 stakeholders from agricultural and agronomical research institutes, 2 ATEAMers.
Aim: to discuss the ATEAM vulnerability assessment framework, scenarios and possible model outputs
specific for agriculture, biomass energy and carbon storage.
A small bioenergy stakeholder workshop was held in January 2002 in France as a direct follow-up of the
first annual stakeholder workshop, where the need for a smaller meeting became apparent and the
event was planned. It focused on issues relating to agriculture, biomass energy and carbon storage.
Three stakeholders from agricultural and agronomical research institutes were introduced to the ATEAM
vulnerability assessment framework, scenarios and possible model outputs for their sector. The
bioenergy workshop provided useful insight in to some of the areas of interest of stakeholders, and
some ideas of how to proceed with inclusion of bioenergy within ATEAM modelling and analysis. Most
of the bioenergy modelling was planned to be carried out as part of the agricultural sector as this was
where ideas, methodologies and resources were most well suited.
Mountain ecosystems and their services, November 2002, Kappel, Switzerland
Participants: 6 Stakeholders whose activities were concerned with Alpine ecosystem services (e.g.