Conference Agenda

Climate change poses significant challenges to the German forestry sector, affecting ecosystems, biodiversity, and the overall vitality of forests. Warmer temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events contribute to the complex set of challenges. To address these challenges, the German forestry sector is exploring various adaptation strategies. This includes developing the cultivation of more climate-resilient tree species, implementing sustainable forest management practices, and developing early warning systems for pest outbreaks and extreme weather events. Additionally, efforts are underway to enhance public awareness and engagement, fostering a collaborative approach to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Against this background, our research employs a trandisciplinary approach combining stakeholder dialogues to understand stakeholder needs and co-creation processes to develop climate service products. The study focuses on climate extremes, including drought, heat, strong wind/storm, and heavy rain. Thereby we also aim to examine the differences in perception among authorities, scientists, and other forest users.

As part of the ClimXtreme project, a total of 27 semi-structured stakeholder interviews with an average duration of 90 minutes were conducted with 22 forest practitioners. Additionally, two workshops with three key practitioners eachhave been carried out. In addition to the project team's own expertise, the tdAcademy was also involved in parts of the project for questions relating to transdisciplinarity, co-creation and stakeholder participation in general. The main aim here was to monitor and evaluate the intended and achieved social impact of the transdisciplinary work.

Stakeholders acknowledged the increasing frequency and severity of climate extremes, with particular concern for drought and heatwaves. They stressed the necessity of proactive and context-specific adaptation measures. The importance of resilient tree species and species mixture was underscored, with an added emphasis on strategies tailored to address the specific challenges posed by drought and heat events. The findings reveal growing climate change-induced conflicts among forestry stakeholders, particularly exacerbated by water scarcity and rising temperatures. Proposed management techniques of the interviewed forest practitioners led partly to contradictory conclusions depending on the orientation of the forestry operation.

Stakeholders expressed an increased demand for more region-specific climate information, especially those providing early warning systems for droughts and heatwaves. Needs were also recognized to be able to better deal with increasing pressure from a critical public and to make forest decision-making processes more understandable to e.g. local forest visitors. To comply with this, a flyer for public relations was co-created with the Karlsruhe City Forestry Office (cf. Poster session).

Overall, this project has shown the promising potential of integrative research, especially since a better understanding of the challenge can be achieved through a plurality of perspectives. Furthermore, the active participation of stakeholders in co-creative research processes can lead to a stronger commitment to and identification with the relevant topic. In addition, mutual understanding and knowledge is improved by new opportunities for participation and involvement in knowledge generation.

Capacity for transdisciplinary approaches in integrated assessment modelling (IAM) teams is largely lacking and if addressed, such capacity could tackle the many criticisms and challenges IAMs face at a systemic level. IAMs are computer simulations showing complex interactions between human systems and natural systems and their results increasingly inform sustainable development and climate policies (van Beek et al. 2020). This major role explains why IAMs encounter growing scepticism and criticism (Skea et al. 2021) about lack of transparency on limitations and assumptions (Royston et al. 2023), and not adequately considering the complexity and uncertainty of societal dynamics (Beckage et al. 2020). To address these criticisms, participatory modelling has underscored the importance of stakeholder participation to legitimise model results and increase their uptake (Doukas et al. 2018) for the last two decades. However, the degree of participation has been limited, and mostly entails engaging stakeholders to validate results and research questions (Braunreiter et al. 2021), therefore not addressing criticisms systemically. Additionally, IAMs commonly integrate diverse knowledge (van der Sluijs 2001) and modelling teams often span institutions, disciplines, countries and fields of interest. Therefore, not only does stakeholder participation need to be more in-depth to address criticisms of IAMs, but effective integration of diverse teams and their knowledge is also needed. This raises the question, what transdisciplinary principals and processes could be introduced to IAM teams build the capacity to address these challenges at a systemic level?

The DIAMOND project–Delivering the next generation of open integrated assessment models for net zero, sustainable development– aims to design and implement a transdisciplinary approach to develop IAMs to better inform decision-making around achieving net zero emissions and sustainable development. Taking the DIAMOND project as a case study, this paper presentation delves into how to build transdisciplinary competences among modellers, researchers and stakeholders in creating more open, robust and relevant IAMs, and what highlights which competencies are vital. With these principals and processes in mind, the paper presents the first phase of the DIAMOND’s transdisciplinary approach that focused on building transdisciplinary capacity using joint problem framing, focus groups, online workshops and surveys. Ethnography was also used to make observations on what challenges and barriers to adopt transdisciplinary principles and processes were present during the first phase.

The paper shows how capacity for transdisciplinarity is being reached in the DIAMOND case to achieve more effective stakeholder engagement, and successful acquisition and integration of diverse knowledge into model development. I will elaborate on how the team is expanding the scope of participatory modelling to implement a transdisciplinary approach into IAMs, as DIAMOND’s main goal is to develop models that are codesigned, coproduced and co-owned by the consortium and stakeholders alike. The paper underpins what key transdisciplinary principles and processes are important for IAM teams to build capacity around, concluding that such transdisciplinary capacity could improve the quality, societal robustness and practical relevance of IAMs to inform sustainable development policies.

The dengue virus affects human health and is transmitted mainly in the Americas by the urban mosquito Aedes aegypti. The distribution and abundance of this species is associated with the growing increase in urbanization, the movement of people, sociocultural practices, the Climate change and state policies. These conditions multifactorial conditions require an ecosystem approach, which considers the eco-bio-social, political and gender factors with an effort transdisciplinary that allows scientists to be associated with decision makers decision and community members in joint action. For such reason it is proposed to develop a participation strategy community for the prevention and management of risk factors in dengue transmission with perspectives on climate, environment, society and culture.

The notion of participation takes on a double importance in the face of this problem due to the importance of the development of democratic processes in communities and the need to involve them in actions strategic approaches to the problem of the disease dengue fever.

The proposal is being addressed through a mixed methodology study, with a transdisciplinary approach, based on the analysis of the occurrence of dengue cases with respect to climatic and environmental variables, the analysis of the risk perception of vulnerable communities, and the co-production of knowledge and solutions with the actors of the territory.

The study is being carried out simultaneously in Córdoba (Argentina) and Santa Marta (Colombia), with the participation of the territorial entities and national institutions involved in the climate and health nexus.