Our German case study leader, the Technical University of Munich was thrilled to kick off its First stakeholder engagement workshop in Upper Main!
The district government of Upper Franconia and especially the departments linked to the WEFE (Water-Food-Energy-Food-Ecosystems) sector were invited to participate in the workshop, which took place on June 25, 2024 in the district government building of Upper Franconia.
The district government of Upper Franconia is the central authority between the Bavarian state government (ministries) and the municipalities and is responsible for bundling and coordinating tasks.
The aim of the event was to engage governmental stakeholders in the Upper Main case study and discuss the coordination of the case study from the governmental side. As well as identify priorities and interests of the government.
The discussion was focused on the interests and expectations of each party including the potential and limitations of the modelling as well as addressing open issues related to the lack of data.
Discover the main conclusion of the workshop:
- Water allocation between sectors and departments is an increassing issue, as no real water allocation / water prioritisation scheme exists.
- Farmers used to be private / unionised, which makes it difficult to connect the agriculture to the state.
- Departments tend to only take responsibility for the policies targeting them: interdisciplinary policies are not picked up.
- Science and research are too idealistic and not sufficiently practical or implementable at the regional level.
- Regional government should be allowed to make decisions locally, however, due to complexity and ever narrowing scope of the EU / National policies, legislation continuously gets stricter in scope.
- Currently, Oberfranken only conducts worst-case scenario modelling, you get scored based on your ‘lowest scoring metric’.
