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Contributions of the Research Group to the Leuphana Sustainability Summit

On March 1st, 2012 Dr. Klaus Jacob, Dr. Sabine Weiland and Dirk Wascher participated in the Leuphana Sustainability Summit in Lüneburg with a special LIAISE session on “Policy Assessment – How to Include Scientific Knowledge in Political Decision Making” and a contribution to the LIAISE workshop on “Tools to Support Sustainability Transition in a Rural-urban Context”.

News from Mar 06, 2012

Sabine Weiland chaired the special session on “Policy Assessment – How to Include Scientific Knowledge in Political Decision Making” and gave an introduction to the LIAISE network. In her talk, she elaborated on Policy Impact Assessment as a tool and an administrative process to better inform decision making and to thereby improve the consideration of the various aspects of sustainable development in policies. She was reporting on recent scientific research to support these procedures, and the challenges to effectively take into account scientific knowledge. Finally, the talk presented the concepts and activities of the LIAISE Network to overcome the gap between scientific research and political decision making.

Klaus Jacob, in his talk on “Institutional demand for sustainability knowledge: A comparative analysis”, reported on recent comparative research on institutional innovation in OECD countries to improve the knowledge basis and in particular to better take aspects of sustainable development into consideration in policy making. To this end, countries have invested considerably in developing tools, setting up support units and developing guidelines. In addition to these activities to support IA, processes and institutions are being developed that are meant to control the IA activities. This should provide incentives to actually apply and use the respective tools, to mobilise the necessary resources and to give more room to the consideration of knowledge. It was analysed how these processes and institutions relate to the setup of the political systems. Klaus Jacob argued that processes and institutions for IA have to be adapted to the political context. Accordingly, there is no ‘one-fits-all’ solution, against which the systems for IA can be evaluated.

The following LIAISE workshop on “Tools to Support Sustainability Transition in a Rural-urban Context” focused on the role of impact assessment tools in a rural-urban planning context. In this workshop, Dirk Wascher gave a presentation on the topic of “SUSMETRO – Sustainable Perspectives for Metropolitan Regions. Impact Assessment Tools for Sustainable Planning and Decision Making”. SUSMETRO focuses on the role of food planning as one of the key services of Dutch metropolitan landscapes.