ateam - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
ateam - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
ateam - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
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ATEAM final report Section 5 and 6 (2001-2004) 49<br />
stepped in to “defend” the project rather than simply moderate the discussion.<br />
Most stakeholders had been sufficiently interested in the project to consider participating in follow-up<br />
activities. Interest in future participation was motivated by the possibility to obtain more in<strong>for</strong>mation on<br />
potential European vulnerability, as well as on sectoral adaptive capacity, and adaptation measures. All<br />
stakeholders wished to be kept in<strong>for</strong>med of future activities and to received further in<strong>for</strong>mation on the<br />
project final results. Many had already talked about ATEAM to colleagues or planned to do so.<br />
The experience of the ATEAM stakeholder dialogue indicates that there is great scope <strong>for</strong> exchange<br />
and collaboration between scientists and stakeholders. The approach followed by ATEAM has been in<br />
general judged useful and relevant to stakeholders. Interest has been expressed <strong>for</strong> the vulnerability<br />
assessment methodology and the mapping tool developed by ATEAM. It was stressed that to increase<br />
the usability and clarity of the final ATEAM maps care should be taken to synthesise the most important<br />
take-home messages of these maps as well as clearly stating the assumptions and limitations involved<br />
in the modelling and the meaningfulness of the results at different scales.<br />
Three key messages to summarise ATEAM’s stakeholder dialogue experience are:<br />
1. <strong>Research</strong> does not need to compromise on scientific rigour to be socially relevant.<br />
2. The ATEAM assessment was made at a spatial resolution exceptionally high relative to many<br />
other global change vulnerability assessments (10’x10’ grid resolution). Nevertheless, ATEAM<br />
results are more useful at European/national scale. It would be interesting to explore in future<br />
how modelling and dialogue methods can further help to address stakeholders’ needs at subnational<br />
scale and to further improve the integration and communication of scientific results.<br />
3. It is critical to think, design, conduct and interpret vulnerability assessments following a (loose)<br />
participatory research approach as this contributes substantially in shaping scientific<br />
assessments, which are meaningful to potential end users. Without this, vulnerability<br />
assessments may remain a fascinating but very expensive abstract exercise.<br />
Stakeholders influence on ATEAM<br />
The indicators of ecosystem services that were estimated by the ATEAM modelling framework were<br />
chosen together with stakeholders from the list of indicators that the ecosystem model were able to<br />
produce. Mostly this choice was straight<strong>for</strong>ward, such as choosing the indicator “wood production” <strong>for</strong><br />
the <strong>for</strong>estry sector, and “run-off quantity and seasonality” <strong>for</strong> the water sector. However, in some cases<br />
we experienced surprises during the stakeholder interaction. For example, many stakeholders from the<br />
agricultural sector were less interested in crop yield estimates than they were in estimates of future<br />
agricultural area (“farmer livelihood”). Furthermore, additional indicators were found to satisfy<br />
stakeholders’ interest in biomass energy production.<br />
We also discussed the temporal and spatial scales of our analyses and received a diverse range of<br />
answers. For some stakeholders both the temporal (time slices 1990, 2020, 2050, 2080) and spatial<br />
scale (10’x10’) were useful. Some wished to focus on long term developments (i.e. stakeholders from<br />
the <strong>for</strong>estry sector are concerned with 2080 and further), but the majority of stakeholders was more<br />
interested in short term estimates <strong>for</strong> the next five to ten years. For some stakeholders the spatial scale<br />
of the assessment was still too coarse, even though the resolution is already exceptionally fine <strong>for</strong><br />
global change assessment. Especially stakeholders from regional nature conservation parks need more<br />
local in<strong>for</strong>mation than the ATEAM was able to provide. Specific case studies would have been very<br />
welcome and ATEAMers were highly interested in conducting such research, but this plan could not be<br />
realised due to budget constraints.<br />
ATEAM researchers learned especially how ecosystem services are recognised and managed by<br />
stakeholders. Within ATEAM considerable ef<strong>for</strong>t has been made to include management in the<br />
vulnerability assessment. For example decision-making in a socio-economic and policy context enters<br />
the assessment via the land use scenarios and via ecosystem models that take into account agricultural