Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

4. RTI Evaluation Culture and Practice
199
constellations, although collaboration with stake-
holders from practice is essential for the purposes of 
achieving the programme objectives.
Communication regarding the programme and its 
results has some weaknesses according to the evalu-
ators, mainly due to the insufficient resources avail-
able for programme management. The ACRP’s climate 
policy objectives are clearly in need of improvement. 
The ACRP’s two central goals of building up re-
search competence on the one hand and providing 
scientifically sound bases for decision-making in 
practical applications on the other complement each 
other in a meaningful way, but also leave the relevant 
stakeholders exposed to an area of conflict. This con-
flict arises from the fact that research has to bridge 
the gap between conflicting requirements stipulated 
by both programme objectives. Table 4-1 provides a 
stylised overview.
The gap between these areas of conflict cannot be 
bridged adequately with the ACRP instruments used 
so far, particularly in light of the growing relevance of 
the topic. Despite all of its practically-oriented fea-
tures, the existing governance model for the ACRP is 
213 See Will et al. (2015).
214 See IPCC (2014).
clearly dominated by the logic of research, which 
was and remains important in terms of the objective 
of developing expertise. The second objective of rel-
evance to society is not reflected adequately in the 
steering process. Both objectives must be brought 
more closely into line in the future.
Assessment and recommendations
The political relevance of the ACRP is beyond dispute 
according to evaluators: Managing climate change 
and containing it wherever possible is one of the key 
challenges of our time, particularly since, along with 
the decline in biodiversity, climate change represents 
the other breaking point for the planet that could 
cause Earth’s systems to topple with irreversible con-
sequences
213
. As shown in the Fifth IPCC Assessment 
Report
214
, there is already a fundamental understand-
ing of climate change and its causes, meaning that 
there is already an adequate knowledge base avail-
able for decisive political action. However, there are 
also still many open questions and therefore further 
research is needed to fill these gaps in knowledge, 
with the ACRP playing a key role here. Although