SOZIAHR

In July 2021, a heavy rainfall event hit the German Ahr Valley, with severe consequences for infrastructure, the economy, and the lives of tens of thousands of people. In the years since, the reconstruction effort has been a prime example of the tensions that exist between rapid, unbureaucratic aid and social justice at the local level on the one hand, and long-term climate adaptation and climate protection requirements on the other. Climate protection and climate adaptation are understood as central goals of supraregional development, but from the outset they have been linked to issues of social justice, legal certainty, and practical feasibility. This is where the interdisciplinary research project SOZIAHR comes in: The aim is to produce reliable insights into how climate-resilient measures in reconstruction can be designed in a socially just, legally secure, and administratively feasible manner. To this end, the project team is investigating, among other things, social burdens and social cohesion, economic distribution effects, as well as legal and administrative processes in (private) reconstruction and their influence on the acceptance and implementation of climate adaptation and protection measures.

The project approach combines perspectives from social sciences, economics, and law. It is based on a large-scale, representative population survey in the Ahr Valley conducted in two waves. In addition, the researchers carry out document analyses, expert interviews, and stakeholder dialogues, as well as an actor analysis and a policy analysis that explore the interactions between the municipal, district, state, and federal levels in order to identify systemic obstacles as well as possible solutions for coordinated, learning-based reconstruction. In this way, the project team records both the individual experiences of those affected as well as institutional decision-making and implementation processes.