Vortrag: From Inter- to Transdisciplinarity: Integrating Perceptions of Scientists and Practitioners in the Evaluation of different Coastal Adaptation Strategies

Coastal protection strategies increasingly have to take into account the effects of climate change. At present, engineering and natural science models that assess the impact of global climatic transformations on regional coastal zones and their protection structures remain rather detached from the knowledge and insights of practitioners. The paper argues, that innovative coastal protection requires not only interdisciplinary but transdisciplinary research that takes into consideration the whole array of actors involved in regional coastal protection strategies.
The findings presented in this paper result from the five year research project A-KÜST – “Changes in the Coastal Climate: Evaluation of Alternative Strategies in Coastal Protection” – that was launched in 2009 in the context of the Climate Impact Research Programme (KLIFF) of the German federal state of Lower Saxony.
Qualitative interviews have been conducted with all decision-makers participating in the design and implementation of present and future measures of coastal protection in the project region of the Ems-Dollart estuary (Southern North Sea). In addition, natural and engineering scientists involved in the regional climate modelling process were interviewed. The interview guide focuses perceptions and orientations towards coastal protection strategies and climate change and aims at accommodating the diversity of scientific and life world perceptions of these problems.
The analysis reveals that perceptions and orientations towards the significance of climate change and the evaluation of different strategies vary considerably among scientists and practitioners.
For the group of scientists, not the scientific discipline they pertain to shapes their perception, but the institutions they work for: Scientists from scientific and technological public agencies frame the topics at hand quite differently than do those from university research institutions. Furthermore, perceptions and knowledge bases of practitioners differ from that of scientists. These differences in scientific and practitioner’s perceptive cultures become especially apparent with relation to the evaluation of different future time horizons.
Against this backdrop, the transdisciplinary integration of perception patterns and evaluation criteria of all actors involved in the implementation of future