“Stakeholder Dialogue between Sustainability Science and Society “– this was the topic of the third synergy workshop organised by the SURE Facilitation and Synthesis Research Project on 2nd December 2021. SURE is a funding priority of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, which focuses on research for sustainability (FONA strategy). The funded SURE collaborative projects have set themselves the task of developing concepts and solutions for sustainable urban and regional development in Southeast Asia and China. Around 45 SURE researchers from Germany and the Asian partner countries took part in the online workshop.
To kick off the event, Dr Franziska Ehnert and Martin Krekeler gave lectures on best practice examples and current concepts of stakeholder participation. Scientific and practical perspectives on how to shape stakeholder dialogues between science and society as “co-creation” processes were presented and discussed.
The second part of the workshop focused on dialogue opportunities on two fronts. The projects intensively exchanged on stakeholder involvement design, methods and approaches. Then it was followed by a storytelling session where participants shared real-life stakeholder involvement experiences accumulated within the SURE projects. There is no doubt that the Covid 19 pandemic has presented obstacles to working with stakeholders in Southeast Asia and China. Nevertheless, a number of success stories were shared at the workshop which point out the methodological resourcefulness and agile management of the SURE projects. Thanks to the digital orientation of real labs, workshops and trainings, stakeholder networks could even be further expanded despite the pandemic-related restrictions. The stakeholder dialogues made a particular contribution to building trust for a sustainable partnership. The participants, however, now hope for the possibility of personal exchanges in the near future. This is essential for the development of reliable partnership relations.