(Poster presentation)

The federal state government of Lower Saxony is the first government in Germany which established a participation process involving a wide range of interest groups, local and state government officials and climate scientists to develop recommendations for an adaptation strategy to climate change. The research project A-CLIM at Leuphana University Lueneburg observed and analysed the process of strategy making with reference to policy outputs, political strategy and normative theories of deliberative policy making.

As output of this extraordinary 4-year participation process a “Recommendation for a Strategy of Lower Saxony to Adapt to the Impact of Climate Change” was handed over to the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony in July 2012. It contains several hundreds of recommended measures in different sectors and policy areas. Public participation is often postulated for policy responses to climate change. But the question of whether participation actually improves policy making has been insufficiently analysed empirically. The case study of Lower Saxony examines the influence of participation on climate adaptation strategy making. What is the impact of factors related to polity and politics (like participation, procedural justice, conflicts or knowledge transfer) to policy output? How do participants deal with special challenges like the uncertainty of climate change scenarios, lack of knowledge about climate change impacts at regional and local levels and in different sectors, as well as the long-term nature of the problem? Is strategy making basically contradicting public participation and deliberative democracy?