RIA 5:Sustainability-oriented transfer products for societal actors

Aim and approach

The context conditions for sharing information on the common area of action and conflict ‘Biodiversity, climate, agriculture and food’ are in particular characterised by misinfor-mation and disinformation. Hence, the Lab investigates means of science communication with regard to the comprehensive practical knowledge required by the actors addressed. So-ciety is already somewhat informed about sustainability and climate change, but it lacks the ability to reliably recognise false statements about climate change and sustainability as false. Many surveys show that citizens as a whole attribute high political importance to the issue of sustainability and want reliable knowledge for action.

At a political level, the topic is also considered highly relevant by UNESCO and the BMBF under the slogan Education for Sustainable Development and is promoted accordingly. However, the success of these programmes has not been adequately evaluated. Taken together, these results illustrate the extent of the impact of misinformation on the public and, in turn, the importance of research-based science communication in order to provide citizens with reliable knowledge for action.

Earlier research on science communication for action knowledge was conceived domain-specifically and ignored the specifics of the target groups at different decision-making levels (citizens, political decision-makers). In particular, it focussed on imparting basic scientific knowledge rather than practical knowledge for action.

The aim of the research & innovation area is to evaluate target group and level-specific science communication on the basis of critical cases, to disseminate it in a scientifically sound and data-based manner and to translate it into training formats in order to enable sustainable action at relevant decision-making levels in the area of action and conflict in biodiversity, climate, agriculture and food.

In addition, modern research data management in line with the FAIR criteria ensures that the research data collected in the Lab is made available quickly for subsequent use, thus creating the basis for broad interdisciplinary research into the complex of topics.