Bridging Science and Lived Experiences to Understand the Links Between Sustainability and Poverty

How can sustainability policies truly serve everyone and ensure that no one—especially people experiencing poverty—is left behind? This guiding question lies at the heart of our project on Poverty Reduction and Sustainability, in which we are applying a system mapping approach to analyse North Rhine-Westphalia’s (NRW) sustainability strategy.

“Can you say what will happen with the final results of your research once the ministry has received them? What will they change?” – this was one of key questions raised by a citizen affected by poverty, who took part in our first participatory workshop held within the Climate & Poverty research project.

This simple question was a clear indicator to us that participatory processes are meaningful only when the created knowledge is fed into and guides the implementation processes.

Combining scientific expertise with lived experiences

The transdisciplinary approach at the heart of the project combines scientific expertise with insights drawn from the lived experiences of people affected by poverty. As part of this research project, participatory workshops were held to co-create the initial systems map of poverty and validate research results.

System mapping allows to visualise not only direct but also indirect connections and interdependencies (e.g. intensifying feedback loops) between, for example, political strategies, societal and individual settings and a certain phenomenon, such as poverty in this case.

For example, child care availability influences labour division in households, as a result of which women’s availability on the labour market and the continuity of their employment is affected. Discriminiation based on gender is an intensifying feedback loop here. The type and continuity of employment influences women’s financial status as well as their future pensions, which in case of low and interrupted employment may eventually lead to poverty among elderly women.

Participatory workshop series

Two workshops took place at the Citizen Centre in the Nippes quarter in Cologne, Germany in collaboration with Zug um Zug e.V., with a strong focus on the perspectives of people directly affected by poverty. An additional two workshops were held at the CSCP offices in Wuppertal, Germany in collaboration with the Neighbourhood Centre, bringing together a mixed group of participants from academia, policy, and poverty-affected groups.

Participants identified key factors that influence poverty and began connecting these elements to visualise their interrelations. These insights have informed the next project phase, which focused on analysing risks and risk reduction potentials within NRW’s sustainability strategy and climate adaptation strategy. The workshop series served as an important platform for formulating policy recommendations that are both socially just and grounded in real-life conditions, ensuring that sustainability strategies leave no one behind.

Key analytical results of both strategies, the sustainability strategy, which is currently under revision, and the climate adaptation strategy, show an ambiguous picture. Despite including activities that potentially reduce poverty (such as education, employment opportunities, health prevention), the strategies have blind spots in terms of poverty reduction that could lead to an intensification of poverty. Major gaps are the increasing costs of housing and energy, youth unemployment, training programmes for unemployed, and unequal access to digital infrastructure.

Citizens both in Cologne as well as in Wuppertal valued the opportunity to contribute their experiences and perspectives, noting that they often lack representation in sustainability policy discussions and decision-making processes. At the same time, representatives from ministries emphasised the benefit of direct dialogues with poverty affected citizens and considered to have such dialogue forums with vulnerable groups more frequently, especially in the drafting phase of new political strategies.

Expected outcomes

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.

The project is funded by the Ministry of Labor, Health, and Social Affairs of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and runs from August to December 2025 with the CSCP as project lead.

The research results will be published at the end of 2025 on our CSCP website library.

To learn more about this project or engage with us on the interrelation between sustainability policies and poverty, please reach out to Alexandra Kessler.