A key aim of the COACCH project is to co-develop the research programme in close cooperation with stakeholders. The aim of this process is to identify key climate change risks and policy solutions that are relevant to decision makers, and to tailor the results and communication strategy to stakeholder needs and interests.
COACCH is therefore proposing a structured co-design and co-production process for stakeholder engagement that will ensure the involvement of decision makers and research users, and the documentation of their needs, thereby encouraging stakeholders to develop a stronger sense of ownership of and access to the process and the final results.
The choice of stakeholders has been made based on a detailed review which has identified four groups with interests in comparable decisions. These are:
1. Policy makers. This group focuses on policy and decision makers, predominately public sector stakeholders in government at different levels.
2. Investment. This group focuses on organisations that are involved in major investments (such as infrastructure) that could be affected by climate change. It includes European banks as well as finance organisations.
3. Business. This group focuses on private sector stakeholders, i.e. companies at different aggregation levels that might have a strong interest in climate impacts.
4. Research. This group focuses on research organisations at different levels and boundary organisations. It also includes non-governmental organisations of the civil society.
Two further interest groups for the project are labeled as “General stakeholders”:
5. General public
6. Media.
COACCH is also working across three aggregation levels, recognising that stakeholders will have different needs. These are:
• International (European) level stakeholders;
• National level stakeholders;
• Sub-national or local stakeholders.
The project has used a combination of techniques to identify a diverse and representative balance of stakeholders across this matrix of themes and aggregation levels.
Where possible ‘key representatives’ of each group have been selected. This has led to the identification of 40 core stakeholders – representing a coverage across the thematic areas and aggregation levels. These are called Working GroupStakeholders (WGS), who will be invited to participate actively in co-designing the project. These organisations will be invited to join the working groups and attend three working group meetings for the duration of the project. They will initially develop the design and research focus, and will go on to provide advice to ensure the consistent relevance of the research to the needs and interests of stakeholders.
From this larger group, around 12 organisations were offered the opportunity to be involved more closely in the project. These so-called Deep Engagement Stakeholders (DES) benefit from more targeted-research and co-production, helping to guide our case study analysis to provide insights of direct relevance. This research will be practice orientated, with a bilateral programme of detailed co-design, co-production and co-dissemination involving approximately two additional bilateral meetings per year to co-design and co-produce a deep engagement case study, to help ensure the relevance and user-orientation of the research, and to discuss the synthesis material and outputs from the work.
USEFUL LINKS
The first first interactive co-design workshop with stakeholders was organised in Brussels on 17 May 2018. Read more about the meeting >>