On 15 April, the second workshop of the “Palmen im Ausseerland” process took place in the Kommhaus in Bad Aussee. Building on the results of the first workshop in February, the participants first looked again at their goals and searched for causal chains for the goals they had formulated: what influences their goals and what in turn influences the achievement of the goals in other areas?
This time it was much more systematic than in February. Accompanied by Nathalie Spittler and Daniel Körner from the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, the 15 participants who came this time again worked in four newly formed groups on concrete topics defined by them.
First, however, as already mentioned, the focus was on the goals and the question of how they think they will be affected by climate change.
And: which “systems” most influence the achievement of their vision. What sounds quite theoretical and abstract at first has very practical and tangible reasons that make it worthwhile to get involved:
All participants bring a lot of experience and expertise to the process from their fields of work and life. However, this is also connected with the experience of obstacles and disappointments in the realisation and implementation of their goals. Therefore, it seems important to us to sharpen these goals as much as possible, and even more important to be clear about how the goals of the individuals relate to each other. If this can be done, it is relatively easy to find ways and means to pursue the goals of all individuals together and thus to put more power into the joint achievement of goals.
The group formulated four concrete goals to be worked on that day:
- to increase the regional added value
- at least not to let the number of farms decline any further
- to strengthen voluntary activities and
- learning, taking into account people and individuals.
For each of these goals, a cause-effect diagram (“causal loop diagram”) was drawn up, which was then refined by the project team and summarised into an overall picture. Here is the result at the end of a busy workshop day.
