The diplomacy of practitioners: for an ecology of practices about the problem of the coexistence of wind farms and red kites

Abstract

Gathering information, comparing points of view, and designing actions in and about problematic situations are no longer purely academic activities. Learning about complex state of affairs is becoming an increasingly widely-distributed necessity and practice, including within civil society. We propose to give first-hand information – as practitioners and members of a citizens’ wind energy co-operative in Belgium – about the problematic and highly controversial coexistence between wind farms and red kite (Milvus milvus). Will be reported the implementation of a community-based management scheme involving active, original practices of collaboration between citizens with local knowledge and skills and experts or scientists in order to produce research and intervention questions, methods, and results that are claimed to be more sustainable. The sustainability challenges are to design and set up in context a local space for collaboration and learning that departs from traditional public regulatory procedures (i.e. impact studies, public information meetings, etc.). However, the outcomes of this collaborative approach remain fragile. We shall argue in this regard that both the Transdisciplinary Environmental Research and the art of diplomacy may be central to the emergence of reflexive governance within transition processes that strive to be sustainable.

Keywords:

• Wind farms
• participatory research
• ecology of practices
• local knowledge
• environmental management

Acknowledgments

We first want to thank all the participants in the workshop on the coexistence between wind farm and red kyte: local birdwatchers, cooperators of Lucéole SCRL and international experts. We gratefully acknowledge the members of the competency group of Lucéole that have created the experimental device that led to the workshop. And finally, we acknowledge the board of Lucéole SCRL and the director of the studies department of Natagora that have crafted a strong partnership enabling trust and rendering the workshop possible.

Notes

1. As we will later explain, in a transformative learning approach, it is necessary to explain the nature of our own position with regard to the events presented. As the authors of the present article, we recount an experience we had with regard to the creation of an original group, a citizen cooperative for the production of renewable energy – Lucéole); an experience which is also a social experiment (in the sense of the American pragmatist John Dewey) half way between a ‘research intervention’ approach in which researchers participate both in the construction of the problem and that of the corresponding collective (Maurer and Ghitens 2010; Stassart, Mathieu, and Mélard 2011) and a social commitment approach on the part of the researcher. In the present case, each member of the cooperative – and therefore including the authors of this article – commits first and foremost as a citizen, with his or her own set of socio-professional skills. We think that by sharing these experiences and insights and by drawing from them, they can be of interest from a scientific point of view.

2. Quotations taken from Stengers (2006). La vierge et le neutrino. Les scientifiques dans la tourmente. (The Virgin and the Neutrino. The Scientists in the Storm) Paris, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, are translated by ourselves.

3. This is freely available (in French) at the Lucéole website: http://www.luceole.be/coexistencemilan.pdf (accessed 23 June 2016) or http://hdl.handle.net/2268/130987

4. Natagora issued a favourable opinion to the development of the Lucéole project. This is undoubtedly not unconnected to the approach adopted by the seminar, the reciprocal learning and confidence generated by the success of this joint approach.

5. PV 27.08.2011 GCP Environnement Lucéole.