CATCH

Visit Open European Day in Bonn

30 April 2018 - Published by Manon van de Riet
On the 25th of April, project manager Susan Lijzenga visited the 5th ‘Open European Day’, at the Resilient Cities 2018 conference in Bonn. Vechtstromen Regional Water Authority was asked to present their experiences on climate change adaptation - such as the CATCH project - in the workshop ‘Aligning stakeholder management to specific needs; key factor to cope with flooding’.

During the workshop there was a valuable conversation with participants from the whole of Europe. Many topics like multi-level governance, stakeholder management, awareness on climate change, citizen involvement and creating value were addressed.

In expressing their challenges many of the participants stated that is was difficult to reach and engage different stakeholders. These challenges already start in the own organizations to find support for climate action in other departments. But also to find support to start external stakeholder involvement. Support is needed from management or a board to make sure that employees feel the freedom to start external stakeholder involvement.

And, when going outside, there are many question like: who are the stakeholders? When to reach them? and How to reach them? This resulted in a large variety of good experiences like reaching out to children at schools, making artist impressions, making use of festivals and personal contact when reaching out to citizens. Or showing evidence storytelling, master classes and visits to sites for professional engagement.

The yield of this lively workshop is valuable input for our project as it gives another insight in the needs of European cities in their challenges to deal with climate change adaptation. And most of all: there is a need for more support on climate change action.

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