Case Study: Stakeholder participation and engagement – a discussion forum to develop joint recommendations, the example of the KNE Dialogue
Berlin, Germany
The Competence Centre for Nature Conservation and Energy Transition (Kompetenzzentrum für Naturschutz und Energiewende, KNE) is a publicly funded organization that fosters a nature compatible energy transition. As the German Federal Nature Conservation Act also refers to the conservation of monuments and historic cultural landscapes, the KNE’s mandate extends to the field of cultural heritage conservation. The KNE’s task is to resolve and prevent conflicts by supporting dialogue processes and to raise discourse by providing scientific expertise and offering dialogue facilitation.
The KNE project to conduct a ‘Stakeholder Dialogue on wind energy in the proximity of UNESCO World Heritage’ (co-financed by the German Foundation for the Environment, Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt) was a communicative and collaborative process with all relevant stakeholders in Germany to discuss in detail the complex issues that give rise to conflicts between wind turbine planning and heritage protection.
The KNE offered a protected space for debates and acted as a neutral moderator. It further supported the development of the joint recommendations by the participants on how to better avoid conflicts and reconcile both important goals of energy transition and heritage protection.
Project website: https://www.naturschutz-energiewende.de/aktuelles/windenergie-und-welterbe-sind-vereinbar-kne-legt-empfehlungen-des-fachdialogs-vor/ (website in German)
The participants
The stakeholder dialogue was composed of representatives of German World Heritage conservation, monument protection, wind energy development, municipalities and other relevant actors. It was particularly important to involve participants from the administrations of the German federal states, as the protection of monuments and World Heritage falls under the responsibility of the individual states. In addition, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre sent a participant, which allowed exploring the interaction between regional, national and international levels.
In the run-up to the dialogue, KNE asked relevant organizations if they wished to send a participant. In addition, the members were consulted in preliminary discussions and in the first two sessions on whether further groups or persons should be involved. This led to the inclusion of further members.
The results of the dialogue
The dialogue produced three kinds of outputs:
- it identified critical issues which could occur when wind energy facilities are planned in the proximity of UNESCO World Heritage properties;
- it presented joint recommendations about what could be done to reconcile wind energy development and World Heritage conservation;
- it documented controversial proposals that did not lead to joint recommendations but are still valuable resources to understand the arguments and concerns of various actors.
The joint recommendations include proposals on how to better reconcile wind energy planning and World Heritage requirements as well as to prevent conflicts, especially those that stem from procedural issues or lack of understanding among involved actors.
The joint recommendations should be understood as suggestions for improvement and introspection as well as an invitation to engage with different actors to better understand their rationale, pain points and space for common ground.
The path to the joint recommendations
Preliminary work, first interviews and background discussions to include external expertise: the preparatory phase involved interviews with various individuals from all relevant stakeholder groups to gain insights on facts, critical issues, conflicts and their possible causes. The KNE project team visited several German World Heritage properties to hold discussions with local actors and infuse the stakeholder dialogue with the experiences of the ‘external’ stakeholders.
Process in five sessions: the dialogue comprised five meetings. The first sessions focused on the identification of topics to further discuss and foster understanding on the methodology and priorities of World Heritage conservation and the development of wind energy in Germany. The later sessions focused on drafts of the joint recommendations.
Minutes of meetings: the KNE documented each meeting in detailed minutes, which were subsequently reviewed by the participants. The agreed minutes formed an important basis for the development of joint recommendations.
Collaboration of participants outside meetings: the participants contributed initially through questionnaires and in individual talks to the preparation of the sessions and to the definition of their scope and content. Starting with the third session, they also worked between meetings on drafts of joint recommendations. Some participants further prepared short presentations on specific aspects or practical examples and thereby gave life to the fruitful and lively exchange in the discussions.
Origin and character of the joint recommendations
How did the joint recommendations come about?
It took six months to create the recommendations. At first, KNE conferred with volunteering participants for an initial draft on a certain topic. The document then went through several stages of revision until the final version was adopted. The KNE coordinated the revision process during and in between the sessions, until a consensual agreement on a version was reached. Although laborious, the revision process allowed fine-tuning and sharpening important aspects in a way that would not have been possible otherwise.
The joint recommendations
Consensus and dissent in the stakeholder dialogue
The recommendations were based on the principle of consensus. Each participant had a veto regarding the recommendation itself and for certain phrasing in it as well. The recommendations thus represent a common denominator and compromise between participants.
The nature of the joint recommendations
The stakeholder dialogue has been a working process in which the participants usually consulted their organizations but did not represent their organizations’ official view.
It would have been unfeasible to ask participants to ensure formal recognition and consensus by their organizations. Such a second level coordination would, in theory, strengthen the results of the dialogue immensely. However, it would have made it impossible to work on a common denominator as official mandates by participants would have bound them to their organization’s official stances, thereby removing the open and productive character of the discussions within the stakeholder dialogue.
The results, therefore, do not represent the official positions of the organizations involved.
The contents of the joint recommendations
The recommendations provide guidance on the design of instruments and measures that could contribute to the reconciliation of energy transition and World Heritage conservation goals. The proposals complement each other.
- One joint recommendation includes five measures to encourage early communication and to cope with the complexity of emerging processes and actor constellations. One of the five measures is the introduction of a fact sheet for each property informing about structures, contacts and protection frameworks (for example, the management plan) relevant for wind energy planning in the proximity of a property. Other measures concern the involvement of the international level or relevant zoning and planning authorities.
- A second recommendation articulates the need to formulate the Outstanding Universal Value of each World Heritage site in a way that is operationally useful for planners as well as authorities. This includes the specification of spatial and planning implications that come with the respective protective needs of a site. The rationale of such a specification is to avoid those conflicts that tend to arise in later stages of project development owing to the fact that the protective needs of World Heritage properties were not precisely known and incorporated in spatial planning and zoning. This contributes to better reconcile the goals of wind energy projects and World Heritage conservation in the first place.
- A third recommendation called for the development of guidance on the visualization of wind turbines. Visualizations, which are supposed to be an objective basis for decision-making, often become the focus of conflicts themselves. The Guidance helps to settle the question whether a visualization is professionally done. In 2021, KNE collaborated with different partners to produce such guidance.
Relevant resources and bibliography
Empfehlungen zur Vereinbarkeit von Windenergieausbau und UNESCO-Welterbestätten in Deutschland
Gute fachliche Praxis für die Visualisierung von Windenergieanlagen
