Chapter 11
Real-World Laboratories Initiated
by Practitioner Stakeholders
for Sustainable Land
Management—Characteristics
and Challenges Using the Example
of Energieavantgarde Anhalt
Helga Kanning, Bianca Richter-Harm, Babette Scurrell, and Özgür Yildiz
Abstract Real-world laboratories have gained substantially in importance as a
format in sustainability and transformation research in recent years in Germany. This
increase in significance is associated with the expectation of fostering and experimentally investigating transformations towards sustainability under real-world conditions
in a bid to gain knowledge of their dynamics, to identify characteristics of successful
transformation processes, and to be able to transfer this knowledge to other cases.
Real-world laboratories are usually managed by a scientific partner, enabling use to be
made of established procedures and methods in areas such as knowledge integration.
Where responsibility for coordinating real-world laboratories lies with practitioner
stakeholders, there is promising potential for their deployment. However, it also gives
rise to situations, processes and challenges that are new to all parties involved and that
have yet to be explored. In principle, experimental approaches that are characteristic
of real-world laboratories are not new in the field of sustainable land management and
spatial development. However, they are not traditionally alluded to as the real-world
For reasons of readability and simplicity, no use is made of the masculine and feminine form when
referring to people or job titles in this publication. However, all genders are implied at all times.
H. Kanning (B) · B. Richter-Harm
Sustainify GmbH, Institut für Nachhaltige Forschung, Bildung, Innovation, Große Düwelstr. 28,
30171 Hannover, Germany
e-mail: kanning@sustainify.de
B. Richter-Harm
e-mail: post@sustainify.de
B. Scurrell
Schefferweg 2, 12249 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: babette.scurell@bund.net
Ö. Yildiz
Department of Environmental Economics, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni,
10623 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: oezguer.yildiz@campus.tu-berlin.de
© The Author(s) 2021
T. Weith et al. (eds.), Sustainable Land Management in a European Context,
Human-Environment Interactions 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50841-8_11
207
Real-World Laboratories Initiated
by Practitioner Stakeholders
for Sustainable Land
Management—Characteristics
and Challenges Using the Example
of Energieavantgarde Anhalt
Helga Kanning, Bianca Richter-Harm, Babette Scurrell, and Özgür Yildiz
Abstract Real-world laboratories have gained substantially in importance as a
format in sustainability and transformation research in recent years in Germany. This
increase in significance is associated with the expectation of fostering and experimentally investigating transformations towards sustainability under real-world conditions
in a bid to gain knowledge of their dynamics, to identify characteristics of successful
transformation processes, and to be able to transfer this knowledge to other cases.
Real-world laboratories are usually managed by a scientific partner, enabling use to be
made of established procedures and methods in areas such as knowledge integration.
Where responsibility for coordinating real-world laboratories lies with practitioner
stakeholders, there is promising potential for their deployment. However, it also gives
rise to situations, processes and challenges that are new to all parties involved and that
have yet to be explored. In principle, experimental approaches that are characteristic
of real-world laboratories are not new in the field of sustainable land management and
spatial development. However, they are not traditionally alluded to as the real-world
For reasons of readability and simplicity, no use is made of the masculine and feminine form when
referring to people or job titles in this publication. However, all genders are implied at all times.
H. Kanning (B) · B. Richter-Harm
Sustainify GmbH, Institut für Nachhaltige Forschung, Bildung, Innovation, Große Düwelstr. 28,
30171 Hannover, Germany
e-mail: kanning@sustainify.de
B. Richter-Harm
e-mail: post@sustainify.de
B. Scurrell
Schefferweg 2, 12249 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: babette.scurell@bund.net
Ö. Yildiz
Department of Environmental Economics, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni,
10623 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: oezguer.yildiz@campus.tu-berlin.de
© The Author(s) 2021
T. Weith et al. (eds.), Sustainable Land Management in a European Context,
Human-Environment Interactions 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50841-8_11
207