final Workshop at the lake Dümmer
On the 22nd of November we held our fifth and final stakeholder workshop. The workshop took place in Diepholz, a city north of the lake Dümmer. Besides the stakeholder’s, local politicians and newly elected members of the lower saxony state parliament were invited.
The workshop was introduced with a short summary of the results, which were archived by each working group this year. The most important working group result is the policy brief.
After the introduction, two groups were formed, which both dealt with how to continue the project’s work after the official project will end in December. The first group discussed the question, how to address the needs and wishes of the stakeholders submitted through our policy brief ‘Handlungsempfehlung zur Transformation der Dümmer-Region’ in a more direct way to the politic.
The requirements written down in the policy brief conclute all actors of the lake region, water management, agriculture, nature conservation and tourism. To acchive the vision, designed in the first workshop, we need the politics to listen. Also, local representatives from the SPD and Bündnis90/Die Grünen were active in this group. For the SPD Heiner Richmann was present and for Bündnis90/Die Grünen Anne-Kathrin Lange. The newly released coalition agreement of lower saxony between the SPD and Bündnis90/Die Grünen overlaps with the requirements in the policy brief as well with the paper ‘Niedersächsischer Weg’. This shows, the requirements are highly topical.
The second group instead discussed the question, what does it need to keep a good connection between all stakeholders. In this case, the participants talked about a possible online platform, where all stakeholders can easily connect with each other and can be updated with all the relevant topics around the lake Dümmer. This platform could be an addition to the Dümmer-Forum and the Dümmer-Beirat as well. It also could make use of already existing newsletter, like the newsletter from the Naturpark Dümmer.
In the end we ended the workshop with a short and final round of feedback. The most important topic was to bring back the Dümmer-Forum, which made a break for some years because of the pandemic. In conclusion, the skakeholder are very happy about our project and the possibilities to connect between each other while the Dümmer-Forum was on pause.
All in all, this project is still not over and we have one final call to make: Meeting up with the new Minister of Agriculture of lower saxony Miriam Staudte from Bündnis90/Die Grünen. With her newly elected, the transformation of agriculture is going strong:
Ich möchte die Transformation der Landwirtschaft zu mehr Klimaschutz, mehr Tierschutz und einer nachhaltigeren Bewirtschaftung voranbringen – und zwar nicht gegen, sondern gemeinsam mit den Landwirtinnen und Landwirten!“
11/8/2022 – ML Niedersachsen
With this quote and new state goverment, being interestet in our project of research on social-ecological scenarios for biodiversity and ecosystem service changes in north temperate freshwater ecosystems over the next half century we are happy with the ending of our final workshop.
