Klima und Armut

Poverty Risks and Reduction Potential in North Rhine-Westphalia's Sustainability and Climate Adaptation Strategies

As climate and sustainability policies increasingly shape economic and social realities, it becomes essential to understand how these transformations influence vulnerable groups, and how policy design can mitigate related risks.

This is the focus of the project Climate & Poverty (Poverty Risks and Reduction Potential in North Rhine-Westphalia’s Sustainability and Climate Adaptation Strategies), which explores the intersection of sustainability policy and poverty reduction in the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany. The focus of this research project is to analyze how the proposed measures of the state’s sustainability strategy might impact people affected by poverty.

Project Goals

Until the end of 2025, the project aims to analyse NRW’s sustainability strategy and climate adaptation strategy from a social perspective in order to identify potential risks that sustainability measures pose to people affected by poverty. Furthermore, it aims to determine risk reduction potentials already embedded within existing policy measures, and develop further policy recommendations to enhance the social equity of the strategy and ensure a just transition.

To address these goals, the project adopts a systemic and integrative perspective, recognising that poverty is shaped by interconnected, societal/economic, and ecological factors. A systems mapping approach is used to build a comprehensive understanding of how these dimensions interact and how they relate to political measures, particularly those outlined in NRW’s sustainability strategy.

The transdisciplinary process is shaped as participatory, as poverty-affected people as well as experts from politics, practice und academia are actively involved in co-creating the systems map and policy recommendations through a series of workshops. Their unique knowledge and lived experience complement insights from literature and document analysis, ensuring that both the model and the resulting political recommendations reflect diverse perspectives and real-world conditions.

Relevance and Significance

Social sustainability is frequently treated as separate from ecological sustainability, leaving social dimensions underrepresented in environmental policy. This project seeks to bridge that gap by fostering dialogue between multiple stakeholders, especially those whose voices are often missing from political and sustainability discussions. Through this integrative and systemic approach, the project enhances the identification of relevant risks and helps develop effective, socially responsive strategies for their reduction.

Findings from the workshops have already demonstrated the value of this participatory approach. The unique insight of poverty-affected participants has substantially enriched the systems mapping, revealing aspects and dimensions not evident from literature alone. Participants also shared their positive feedback for being included in a process that acknowledges their lived experience and provides a platform for political dialogue. All participants of the workshops are offered a role as an official advisor (“Beiratsmitglied”) of the project.

Lastly, the findings from this project about potential risks and risk reduction in sustainability strategies may be applied to other areas, most notably other national, local or regional (sustainability) policies with a potential impact on poverty in that area. This approach of transdisciplinary analysis may be transferred to other fields of (ecologic) sustainability as well and analyze risk for other social aspects and other vulnerable groups.

Outlook & Next Steps

Das Projekt wird von dem Ministry for Labour, Health and Social Affairs (Ministerium für Arbeit, Gesundes und Soziales, MAGS) and will conclude at the end of 2025 with a set of politische Empfehlungen for risk reduction potentials within NRW’s sustainability strategy and climate adaptation strategy.

By integrating the voices of affected groups with systemic analysis, the project aims to contribute to a more socially just and inclusive sustainability transition in NRW.