Building Collaborative Partnerships: An Example …
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making process. This requires collaboration between administrational units, as well
as between administration, the private sector, and citizens. To make collaboration
effective, a suitable management strategy is required that includes the function of
a coordinating and moderating instance. This can be executed by an independent
organisation that has both, knowledge in the field of climate change adaptation, and
project management capabilities. Research centres or universities are examples of
such instances. They are capable to collect, analyse and evaluate the data and results
of actors, and weight and interpret them independently and free of economic or any
other interests. They do this in close cooperation with all partners aiming at finding
the most suitable consensus.
Within the framework of a pilot project, carried out in the administrative district
of Mansfeld-Südharz, Germany, a local climate change adaptation strategy has been
developed and finalized in previous years. The cooperation of diverse actors from
practice, working in public and private organizations, as well as researchers, was one
of the main reasons that practically useful results were achieved during this project.
An optimization, and possibly a better acknowledgement of measures within local
communities, is an aspect to include citizen science approaches as an additional
source of expertise. However, whereas public participation normally leads to specific
measures, citizen science is an open and unbiased process.
In a follow-up project, called “BebeR”, aimed at reducing erosion in small river
catchments induced by heavy rainfalls, as they are presumed to increase due to climate change, this kind of collaboration between different actors is envisaged to solve
spatial and climate related problems in a multi-dimensional way. Multi-dimensional
way means that the different perspectives concerning an environmental problem
are considered adequately and balanced. Such different perspectives occur due to
the varying interests and tasks that the relevant actors have. Therefore, the moderating instance, a universities working group with long term project management
experiences, explicitly takes into account these experiences as well as expectations
and requirements of the actors. In such a way, the “BebeR”-project has significant
characteristics of a living laboratory, “a kind of giant sandbox in which there is the
freedom to explore—creatively and collaboratively—the technological, environmental, economic and societal aspects of sustainability” (UBC 2018), thus focusing on
problems of climate change. However, due to the different sectors and perspectives
that occur in such a project, limiting factors and barriers were experienced as well.
Such restrictions must be dealt with in an adequate manner. Some aspects related to
those limitations are discussed later on as well.
2 Building a Network of Relevant Actors
The following sections refer to different aspects of collaborative work that apply to
the project “BebeR”, which is described in more detail in Sect. 2.2.
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making process. This requires collaboration between administrational units, as well
as between administration, the private sector, and citizens. To make collaboration
effective, a suitable management strategy is required that includes the function of
a coordinating and moderating instance. This can be executed by an independent
organisation that has both, knowledge in the field of climate change adaptation, and
project management capabilities. Research centres or universities are examples of
such instances. They are capable to collect, analyse and evaluate the data and results
of actors, and weight and interpret them independently and free of economic or any
other interests. They do this in close cooperation with all partners aiming at finding
the most suitable consensus.
Within the framework of a pilot project, carried out in the administrative district
of Mansfeld-Südharz, Germany, a local climate change adaptation strategy has been
developed and finalized in previous years. The cooperation of diverse actors from
practice, working in public and private organizations, as well as researchers, was one
of the main reasons that practically useful results were achieved during this project.
An optimization, and possibly a better acknowledgement of measures within local
communities, is an aspect to include citizen science approaches as an additional
source of expertise. However, whereas public participation normally leads to specific
measures, citizen science is an open and unbiased process.
In a follow-up project, called “BebeR”, aimed at reducing erosion in small river
catchments induced by heavy rainfalls, as they are presumed to increase due to climate change, this kind of collaboration between different actors is envisaged to solve
spatial and climate related problems in a multi-dimensional way. Multi-dimensional
way means that the different perspectives concerning an environmental problem
are considered adequately and balanced. Such different perspectives occur due to
the varying interests and tasks that the relevant actors have. Therefore, the moderating instance, a universities working group with long term project management
experiences, explicitly takes into account these experiences as well as expectations
and requirements of the actors. In such a way, the “BebeR”-project has significant
characteristics of a living laboratory, “a kind of giant sandbox in which there is the
freedom to explore—creatively and collaboratively—the technological, environmental, economic and societal aspects of sustainability” (UBC 2018), thus focusing on
problems of climate change. However, due to the different sectors and perspectives
that occur in such a project, limiting factors and barriers were experienced as well.
Such restrictions must be dealt with in an adequate manner. Some aspects related to
those limitations are discussed later on as well.
2 Building a Network of Relevant Actors
The following sections refer to different aspects of collaborative work that apply to
the project “BebeR”, which is described in more detail in Sect. 2.2.