fazit: LimnoScenES at the Dümmer-lake
With our last workshop in November 2022 the project is coming to an end after we worked together with stakeholders from the Dümmer-lake region since 2019. In total, five workshops happend in four years plus extra five working group meetings in 2022.
In Februaray 2019, the international project started with the kick-off meeting in Sweden at Lake Ringsjön. Besides the Lake Ringsjön in southern Sweden, the Lac Saint-Charles in Québec, Canada and the Dümmer-lake in Lower Saxony, Germany were part of the case studies.
In Germany at the Dümmer-lake, the project went on with 18 interviews to idetify the social-ecological problems of the region from April to June and was followed by a presentation at the Dümmer-Forum in June 2019 and by the first stakeholder workshop in November 2019. At the first workshop, different stakeholders from the lake region designed a sustainable future vision for the Dümmer in 2050. In the second workshop, the vision was used as target knowledge to design with the help of the backcasting method a timeline for milestones to achieve the designed vision. In January 2021, the stakeholders from the second workshop met to discuss the results. Continuing with the vision and the milestones, in the third workshop a rough transition concept was developed by the stakeholders. In the fourth workshop, further activities for another year were planned and with the help of the LimnoScenES team out of the stakeholders three working groups were formed:
- working group to plan out a digital information platform,
- to look for possible fundings to finance an online platform and maybe a new employee for a regional organisation to moderate and conduct the platform and
- to finalize the transition concept and to write a policy brief.
The three working groups met over and over again in 2022. The most important outcome was the policy brief or in german the ‘Handlungsempfehlung zur Transformation der Dümmer-Region‘. The policy brief was handed over to newly selected state parlament members of lower saxony at the 28th of October, 2022. With the policy brief different requirements were written down by the stakeholders out of the four different lake relevant sectors, water management, agriculture, nature conservation and tourism.
The policy brief, as well as the other working group results were presented at the final and fifth workshop and at a Dümmer-Beirat meeting, both in November 2022. Besides the policy brief, most important is a transparent communication between the stakeholders, state actors and the politics. The first step is bringing back the Dümmer-Forum as speaker for the lake monitoring and the lakes water quality after a long break caused by the pandamic. In the Dümmer-Beirat meeting in late November 2022, the care-taker of the Dümmer announced the next Forum for April 2023. First steps are made for a wholesome region.
With the last public events, the LimnoScenES project is ending with the year 2022. But we added one more to do to our list: a meeting with the newly selected Minister of Agriculture Miriam Staudte of Lower Saxony. We hope to bring her, local politicians and the stakeholders of the Dümmer-region together in early 2023. For this we got invited to the Landkreis Diepholz.
More informations about the project from start to the end is written in german in the final report.
For more project results check our publications side.
