Constructing a ‘landscape justice’ for windfarm

development: The case of Nant Y Moch, Wales

1. Introduction: The winds of (scale) change

Almost half of onshore windfarm applications in the

United Kingdom are rejected, principally because of

‘concern that a large wind farm would damage the

landscape’ . While support from the Westminster

government wavers, polls indicate an increasing minority

of public opinion opposed to windfarm developmenti. In

Wales, vehement protests over the development of

windfarms centre on landscape which, when unpacked, is

perceived by protesters as much more than a visual

aesthetic. In May 2011, around 1,500 people protested at

the Senedd (parliament) in Cardiff, drawing headlines

such as ‘The day the country came to town’ and claims

that this was the biggest demonstration rural mid-Wales

had ever mounted. Protesters carried placards critical of

Technical Advice Note 8 (TAN 8), the planning policy

which directs windfarm developments to designated areas .

Wind turbines and pylons were depicted as monstrous

incursions, while slogans included ‘Keep Powys Pretty’.

Speaking to the media, Jonathan Wilkinson, Chair of

Montgomeryshire Against Pylons (MAP) and County Chairman

of the National Farmers Union said: ‘The very first thing

they (the Welsh government) need to do is engage with

local communities - it’s something they’ve completely

1

failed to do: Get talking to us’

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-16093870). Wilkinson

farms near the small Powys village of Meifod in the heart

of the Vyrnwy Valley where a proposed pylon corridor

could carry electricity from a cluster of new windfarms.

Powys is the administrative area which includes the

historic county of Montgomeryshire. In June 2011 a

similar sized protest caused a Powys Council meeting to

relocate to the livestock market in Welshpool to

accommodate numbers. With cross-party support, Councilors

voted for a review of windfarm policy and supported a

motion to the Welsh government calling for a moratorium.

Following these protests, the Welsh Government reaffirmed

its commitment to wind power to bring down carbon

emissions and asserted that decisions had to be made in

the national interest. However, First Minister Carwyn

Jones was also prompted to invoke TAN 8 as a cap on

windfarms development for the first time. Prefiguring a

call for planning consents for major energy

infrastructure projects to be devolved from Westminster

to the Welsh government, Jones spoke of ‘the

proliferation of large-scale wind farms’, ‘inappropriate’

levels of development, ‘obtrusive pylons’ and rural

communities getting the ‘disbenefits of major

infrastructure without the economic advantages high

voltage power brings to city areas’ (Jones, 2011).

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The academic literature establishes that evaluations of

the visual impact of windfarms on landscape are the

predominant factor influencing people’s support or

opposition in Europe, motivated primarily by feelings

about equity rather than bald self-interest . In Wales,

the mobilisation of an overarching rationale vis-à-vis the

need to tackle global climate change may be eliding local

imaginaries of place, disrupting community values,

despoiling landscapes and embedding injustice (c.f. Bell

& Rowe, 2012). Moreover, in this paper we question

whether community benefits (financial compensation in

various forms) constitute justice for the peopled

landscapes which host windfarm developments in Wales. On

the other hand, conflicts over windfarm development do

tend to constrain the potential of an effective means of

climate change mitigation (c.f. Zografos & Martinez

Alier, 2009). In that context, moreover, opposition may

inhibit the development of global responsibility and

spatially extensive solidarities among peoples . In these

regards, we must pay some attention to windfarm ownership

(c.f. Warren & McFadyen, 2010; Cumbers, 2013).

As part of a larger project on the ‘Human Dimensions of

Climate Change’ in Wales centred on an omnibus survey

(Capstick et al., 2013), in this paper we extend our

research interest beyond the direct impacts associated

with climate change, particularly extreme weather events

such as flooding, to the impacts of climate change

3

mitigation strategies. In this paper, then, we consider

the impact on affected communities and landscapes of

windfarm development. Our review of the relevant

literatures, suggests that landscape is not sufficiently

considered in windfarm development and we ask how paying

it more attention might lead to different understandings

of justice: Landscape justice thus becomes the central

theme to be unpacked and developed in this paper. Brace

and Geoghegan argue that focussing on familiar, everyday

landscapes presents the opportunity to research climate

change as relational phenomena on a local level (Brace &

Geoghegan, 2011). They note that climate change

knowledges are not made and circulated exclusively by

science, but also as lay-knowledges, particularly those

made in and through visual and visceral engagements with

landscape (see also Geoghegan & Leyshon, 2012). Jasanoff

also notes, addressing global climate change will demand

facts that matter to people in their everyday lives as

well as scientific matters of fact (Jasanoff 2010). Hulme

proposes that we understand the meaning of climate change

to hinge upon its conception as a ‘mutating hybrid’,

simultaneously physical transformation and cultural

object, dissolving the boundary between nature and

culture (Hulme, 2007 p.10). Hulme requests that human

geographers reclaim climate from natural science (c.f.

Head & Gibson, 2012), arguing that the latter’s framing

of the issue means that it does not travel well between

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scales and tends to elide the relationship formed between

people and places over time.

Herein, we will propose that landscape with its

territorially unbounded reach can be an appropriate

concept for framing facts that matter to local people.

With respect to climate change and its mitigation, the

political tension between scales, from local campaigns

through national government to international conventions

is apparent. An analysis based on landscape can serve to

mediate - though not in or by itself resolve - scalar

conflicts between local environmental justice (e.g.

Walker, 2012), national energy security and global

climate change mitigation. In this, we look beyond narrow

conceptions of place, community and value to develop

proposals for thinking about and doing justice

differently. Whilst this paper does not substantively

engage with energy or spatial planning policy (c.f.

Bridge et al., 2012), the notion of landscape justice

which we begin to develop may help climate change travel

between both spatial and temporal scales, and also

increase relational understandings. In addition to scale,

for us landscape justice must be attentive to value,

exclusion, the creation of public space, antagonism and

pluralism (c.f. Sen, 2010 on public reasoning).

In the next section we review the literature on windfarm

development, concentrating on that which deals

5

substantively with landscape and so highlights a niche

for our contribution. We are interested in how justice is

currently constructed by pro and anti-windfarm arguments

and especially how landscape is implicated in such

constructions. Subsequently, we develop our analytical

framework, adopting a phenomenological conception of

landscape. We then outline our methodology, relating our

methods and sources of data to our conceptual approach.

In the empirical sections of the paper we trace

conceptions of landscape and its relation to justice

through the pro and anti-windfarm discourses of

communities of interest. Our research focuses on windfarm

development in mid-Wales, specifically SSE’s Nant y Moch

proposal (SSE was formerly Scottish and Southern Energy

plc). In the discussion which follows, we review and

evaluate our findings. We ask how justice is currently

practiced, contrasting particularly the compensatory

notion of ‘community benefits’ with justice as

participation and the right to an effective voice .

Finally, we propose a tentative conception of justice

that is in tune with our landscape approach and hence

more attentive to scale and relational space. For

scholars working in area, this conception highlights the

importance of considering recognition, space, value and

antagonism in the social construction of

justice/injustice.

6

1.1 Landscape and justice in analyses of windfarm

developments

There is a considerable body of work on the development

of renewable energies and specifically windfarms . Here

we concentrate on research which relates to landscape,

attentive also to how notions of social, environmental

and climate justice are in play in the literature both in

terms of distribution (of costs and benefits) but -

necessarily preceding that - with respect to democratic

participation in time and space. Devine-Wright and Howes

research the attitudes of residents in Llandudno and

Colwyn Bay towards a proximate 750 Megawatt (MW) offshore

windfarm . Generally, the authors regard landscape as

visual, though the notion of a ‘restorative environment’

i A YouGov poll commissioned by French energy company EDF (June 2012)found the public favoured wind over nuclear, gas or coal. 58% of

people were in favour of wind while 18% held unfavourable opinions.

Support for wind had dropped from 75% in 2008, however, while opinion

had polarised. Results confirmed an ICM/Guardian poll of March 2012.

An 18/19th October 2012 opinion poll conducted by YouGov and

commissioned by the Sunday Times showed that a majority of the British

public want the government to use more solar and wind power

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/10/24/british-public-want-more-solar-

and-wind/#QSBLCtUQqZM99S2D.99 In Wales, a YouGov poll commissioned by

RenewableUK Cymru (May 2013) found that ‘almost two thirds of people

in favour of wind as part of energy mix’ and ‘two thirds say wind

farm would not put them off visiting an area’

http://www.renewableuk.com/en/news/press-releases.cfm/2013-05-01-new-

poll-suggests-strong-support-for-wind-energy-in-wales

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invests it with a broader phenomenology, i.e. greater

meaning in experiences of everyday life-worlds. Woods

researches the (then) proposed Cefn Croes windfarm sited

only some 8km southeast of the proposed Nant y Moch

development . With 39 turbines, each 328 feet high,

producing a combined 58.5MW, when it opened in 2005 Cefn

Croes was the largest onshore windfarm in the UK. Among

other factors, Woods asks for an improved understanding

of landscape. He conceptualises landscape visually,

marking however the difficulty with a more experiential

and emotional valuation. Highlighting an imbalance of

rights to counterbalance responsibilities across scales,

Woods inverts analyses which view the responsibility to

mitigate climate change in, say, the UK as deriving from

an historic presumption of the right to emit carbon

dioxide (e.g. Dobson, 2003). Spatial and temporal

complexities, not least knowledge and intentionality, do

render apportioning these rights and responsibilities

problematic (c.f. Garvey, 2008, Chapter 3, Reynolds et

al., 2009). With a case study of a proposed 140 turbine,

370MW windfarm near Searchlight, Nevada, Phadke argues

that opposition is spatial and centres on the question of

who negotiates conflicts between social commitments to

the new energy economy and rural identity . Pre-echoing

our concern, Phadke notes that a utilitarian approach to

climate change mitigation does elide local landscape.

Like Woods, she opens up questions of rights and

responsibilities across scales. Phadke’s advocacy of a

8

new ethic for windfarm development resounds with wider

calls for a new climate change ethic (c.f. Garvey, 2008,

Chapter 2) and indeed a new environmental ethic per se

(e.g. Sylvan, 2002). It also previews our own interest in

the relation between landscape and justice in windfarm

development.

Highlighting the concerns driving this paper, Zografos

and Martinez-Alier argue that conflict over a windfarm

development in rural Catalonia is fuelled by tension

between the instrumental rationality of the planning

system and alternative landscape valuations . They

conclude that opposition is about: (i) maintaining local

control and property rights over wind; (ii) spatial

planning, i.e. contra a massive concentration of

generating capacity in one area; (iii) a lack of

meaningful local participation in influencing siting

decisions and concomitant feelings of powerlessness; (iv)

fairer cost-benefit distributions; (v) the way landscape

is officially valued, which ignores cost-benefit concerns

as well as local appreciations of landscape evident in

‘life projects’. Imbued with landscape values, life

projects are ‘place-based but not limited to the local’ ;

they are communities’ efforts to sustain meaningful

everyday lives, efforts which are socio-cultural rather

than strategic, i.e. more than opposition to state and

market promoted developments.

9

Researching the affect of TAN 8 on investment in large-

scale windfarm development, Cowell makes a number of

telling observations on landscape and justice in windfarm

development (Cowell, 2007, 2010). On landscape, he notes

the temporally static conception and failure of planning

to permit alternative imaginings. He indicates the

challenge of scale-jumping and problematises how local

landscape can be represented at national and global

levels of policy-making. He also notes institutional

constraints on how landscape is valued, marking too the

tension between justice as local, particular, community,

in-place participation and the universalising intra and

intergenerational justice imperatives of sustainable

development. As prerequisites, windfarm development

should involve justice as recognition and participation

and Cowell questions why research has focussed so much on

community benefits. Considering how landscape is valued,

Cowell et al. observe that ‘reflection about values does

not take place in a vacuum, but in institutionally

structured decision-making contexts that affect which

values warrant consideration’ (Cowell et al., 2011,

p.542).

Our review of the relevant literature on windfarm

development confirms that the analytical potential of

landscape has been unexplored with respect to determining

justice. This observation may extend to the wider climate

change domain, including adaptation as well as other

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mitigation measures. The gap in knowledge we identify

begs:

(i) a take on landscape which recognises it as dynamic

in space and time, lived, particular and full of

affect ;;

(ii) paying greater attention to scale and scale-

jumping, especially how local landscape is

represented in national and global arenas ;

Cowell, 2007, 2010);

(iii) renewed interest in how landscape is valued and

under what institutional constraints ; Cowell et

al., 2011);

(iv) and thus looking beyond utilitarian conceptions of

justice to a landscape justice approach that is

attentive to space, time, materiality, affect,

scale, participation and value.

1.2 Looking to justice through landscape

In this section we develop our analytical framework based

on landscape. Considerable geographic research has

focussed on the role landscape plays in social, cultural

and political systems ; Henderson, 2003; Duncan, 2005;

Olwig & Mitchell, 2009). With landscape justice as our

central theme, we are especially interested in landscape

research that has touched upon justice. Walker and

Fortmann observe the importance of ideas of landscape in

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rural places where traditional production activities come

into conflict with new economies of aesthetic landscape,

concluding that who owns landscape and decides how it

looks are key political questions . Trudeau observes that

certain meanings of landscape can be stabilised for a

time as political struggle subordinates alternatives,

emphasising the exclusionary power of landscape . In

similar vein, DeSilvey has argued for ‘anticipatory

history’ as an approach that reveals landscape as dynamic

and entangled with politics, opening up possibilities for

responding differently to future change (DeSilvey, 2012).

Defining landscape as ‘the mutual shaping of people and

place’, Spirn draws a parallel between her concept of

‘landscape literacy’ and the verbal literacy which she

judges foundational to the US civil rights movement: ‘To

read landscape is also to anticipate the possible, to

envision, choose and shape the future’ (Spirn, 2005,

p.400). Spirn concludes that planning and design can

either perpetuate inequities or promote democratic

change. To challenge constructions of decision-making

from above or outside the arena of social concern, Görg

conjures the notion of ‘landscape governance’ to advocate

broader public discussion and making space for local

knowledges . Focussing on institutions, McCann has argued

that: (a) landscape discourse and materiality are

interwoven and should be recognized as such; (b)

institutional state spaces of planning allow for the

12

ideological mediation of landscape while maintaining an

illusion of balance and openness; (c) state planning

institutions tend to create a binary adversarial politics

that precludes other views .

This brief review of relevant landscape research

indicates similar concerns to those we unearthed when

looking at windfarm development, i.e. the need for a

conception of landscape as lived, dynamic and above all

political with justice considered via meaningful

political participation and institutional accommodation.

Our analytical framework draws extensively on Brace and

Geoghegan who bring together work on landscape,

temporality and lay-knowledges (Brace & Geoghegan, 2011).

Ultimately, Brace and Geoghegan conclude that a more

grounded approach to climate change demands greater

sensitivity to both temporal and spatial scale. They

argue that, rather than being disparaged by an

overarching natural science, lay-knowledges must be

valued differently. ‘In sum, climate change is a

relational phenomena that needs to be understood on the

local level, attending to its distinctive spatialities

and temporalities’ (p.297). We propose that this

statement holds good for climate change mitigation

measures.

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Brace and Geoghegan foreground landscape - ‘in all its

multifarious definitions and theorizations’ - as an

organising concept and a means to think through the

spatialities and temporalities of climate change.

However, the authors lean towards non-representational

and phenomenological theorisations of landscape as the

plane on which ordinary, everyday life is lived but also

on which futures are imagined (c.f. Rose and Wylie,

2006); and to landscape as embodied and affective

practices of dwelling (c.f. Ingold, 2000). They argue

that ‘climate and the ways it may change’ must be

discussed in a relational context: ‘a ‘mingling’ of

place, personal history, daily life, culture, and values’

(p.289). A future-oriented temporality of climate change

might benefit from local grounding rather than being

oriented towards distant places and faraway lands:

‘climate change is not only a global problem but a local

one’ (p.292). This suggestion is bolstered by the

findings of the Wales omnibus survey which establishes a

connection between experiences of extreme weather and

changes in people’s climate risk perceptions (Capstick et

al., 2013).

Bringing together discussions of landscape and time,

Brace and Geoghegan note two problems with non-

representational and phenomenological approaches to

landscape: an emphasis on immediacy, and also on the

specificity and particularity of ‘the encounter’. They

14

offer Ingold’s notion of dwelling and Massey’s

reflections on space as means of addressing these

problems (Ingold, 2000, Massey, 2005): landscape is

recognised as ‘being with us but also beyond us, spatially

and temporally’; and as involving ‘multiple trajectories

and a simultaneity of stories so far’ (Brace and

Geoghegan, 2011, p.293). Drawing on Ingold (2000), John

Wylie argues that landscape conceived through notions of

dwelling and embodied experience can include the

transient and the visual (Wylie, 2003): Dwelling is ‘the

everyday project of living in the world’ and landscape ‘a

milieu of involvement’’ (Wylie, 2007, p.161). Dwelling

can thus synthesise the meaning and materiality of

landscape (c.f. McCann, 1997). It does not privilege

duration of habitation or any rural idyll, enabling

rather the fleeting and transient. Meanwhile, vision is a

corporeal process and seeing/gazing a practice of

dwelling done from within landscape.

Adopting Brace and Geoghegan’s spatio-temporal take on a

phenomenological approach, we look to landscape research

which focuses on the ‘everyday material world in which

people live, work, interact and debate with each other’,

stressing ‘issues of power, identity, inequality and

conflict’ . In this, we are attentive to how landscape is

produced and reproduced, especially to how state and

capitalist interests are in play and to processes of

subjection, domination and exploitation. Following

15

Schein, we understand landscape as representing norms,

values and fears, thence playing a role in mediating

social and cultural reproduction . We are also cognisant

of calls to develop a concept and practices of landscape

to achieve greater social justice . In summary, then, our

organising concept is landscape and our analytical

framework is constructed in everyday, lived life,

attentive to lay-knowledges, relationality, values and

affect. Through this conception of landscape we analyse

the spatialities and temporalities in discourses around

windfarm development considered as a function of climate

change, i.e. as a potentially mitigating technology. In

this, we seek to be cognisant of remembered and

forgotten/disregarded histories, contested and unexamined

presents, and alternative future imaginaries.

2. Research design and methods

Here we outline our methodology, relating methods and

sources of data to our conceptual approach. Our research

focuses on the development of onshore windfarms in mid-

Wales, homing in on the Nant y Moch proposal in

Ceredigion. We ask how reconsideration of landscape might

lead to different constructions of justice in windfarm

development? To address this question we enquire into how

landscape and justice are currently represented by pro

and anti-windfarm discourses. We also ask how justice is

currently practiced, especially attentive to the contrast

16

between the compensatory notion of ‘community benefits’

and justice as participation and the right to an

effective voice.

In tune with our organising concept and analytical

framework, during the autumn of 2012 we conducted in-

depth interviews with ten key-informants whose everyday

lives are thoroughly entangled with windfarm development

in mid-Wales. Interviewees included members of the

Cambrian Mountain Society (CMS), which opposes the

windfarm, people resident in the area of proposed

development, citizens concerned with democratic

processes, and local professionals associated with the

developer SSE. We also spoke with RenewableUK (Cymru) and

Friends of the Earth Cymru, including the Aberystwyth

group. From initial contact with prominent persons in

both pro and anti campaigns, key-informants were selected

on the ‘snowball’ principle. We circulated among

communities contesting the Nant y Moch proposal, tracing

tensions in perceptions of landscape via semi-structured

interviews constructed around our research questions.

Interviews featured herein are consciously chosen to

reflect the adversarial relations which define discourses

of windfarm development in the UK. Key-informants have

been anonymised.

In addition to key-informant interviews, we also used our

analytical framework to deconstruct the CMS film Secret

17

Wales as well as websites and other material from pro and

anti-windfarm groups. From July 2012 to August 2013,

national (Wales) and super-national (UK) media coverage

of windfarm developments and related stories on energy

policy and climate change was monitored, mainly via the

internet, for context and allusions to landscape and

justice (we also used he internet to explore the relevant

news archive). Over the same period, we also participated

in public meetings in different towns in mid-Wales, took

part in discussion groups, mainly via email, and had many

unstructured face-to-face conversations about windfarm

development, acting as an ‘observant participator’

(Brown, 2007). Finally, we spent time walking in and

perceiving the landscapes of proposed and existent

windfarms, sub-stations and pylon corridors. For the most

part, embodied experiences of the landscapes of Nant y

Moch, Cefn Croes and the Vrnywy Valley elides explicit

presentation and analysis herein, being acknowledged as

slippery in these regards (see Wylie, 2005, 2006, 2007).

That said, in our embodied encounter with these

landscapes we were consciously attentive to spatial

change over time as well as to the other lives we

observed and directly interacted with, including the

fragments of life-history we gleaned in conversations.

Our embodied encounters with landscape contributes

‘texture’ to the analysis which follows.

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3. Nant y Moch windfarm: Landscapes of justice and

injustice

In this section of the paper we introduce the specific

context and the organisations and movements who are

contesting Nant y Moch windfarm. We then trace

conceptions of landscape and its relation to justice

through the pro and anti-windfarm discourses of these

communities of interest. The Welsh Government awarded an

Option Agreement to SSE allowing it to seek planning

permission for a windfarm on Forestry Commission Wales

land at Nant y Moch (see http://nantymochwindfarm.com),

one of seven Strategic Search Areas (SSAs) identified in

TAN 8 (c.f. Cowell, 2007, 2010). Deployment of SSAs in a

spatial planning strategy has resulted in high

concentration of generating capacity in rural areas of

mid-Wales (See Figure 1, areas B, C and D). A map

submitted to a planning inquiry in February 2013 by Powys

County Council, which administers areas B and C, records

nineteen windfarm applications in those areas, while Nant

y Moch is the single large-scale development proposed for

area D in neighbouring Ceredigion. The complexities of

partially devolved government mean that, while spatial

planning by the Welsh government has resulted in more

applications for larger windfarms, greater than 50MW

capacity, that same scale of proposal means consenting

powers lie outside Wales with UK authorities . Though

construction work on Nant Y Moch was scheduled to start

19

in 2010, the project is dependent on the substation,

which in late 2012 is proposed to be built at Cefn Coch.

SSE would not risk starting work in Ceredigion before

technologically inter-linked projects in Powys – grid

connection and other windfarms - were certain, and these

are the subject of a public inquiry.

Employing over 185,000 people, SSE is one of the UK’s

‘Big Six’ energy supply companies and the largest

generator of renewable electricity. RenewableUK is the

not-for-profit trade association of wind and marine

energy companies, including SSE Renewables. In 2012,

RenewableUK recognised the strength of opposition to

onshore windfarm development in Wales, appointing David

Clubb as full-time head of its Wales office. The main

forum for opposition to Nant y Moch windfarm, the

Cambrian Mountain Society (CMS) campaign for the Cambrian

Mountains to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural

Beauty (AONB) in order to ‘sustain or enhance the

landscape, natural beauty, biodiversity, archaeology,

scientific interest, and cultural heritage of the

Cambrian Mountains’ (http://www.cambrian-

mountains.co.uk). As Cowell observes, AONBs and National

Parks constitute the top tier of protected landscapes in

the UK and (so) contain little windfarm development

(Cowell, 2010, p.244). The Cambrian Mountains is an area

of upland moorland in mid-Wales which extends into three

unitary authority areas, Powys, Ceredigion and

20

Carmarthenshire; it stretches as far north as

Machynlleth, south nearly to Llandovery, and so almost

joins Snowdonia and Brecon Beacons National Parks.

In late 2012, CMS has a membership of around 350 and on

the 29 November 2012 its online petition against Nant y

Moch had 1,163 signatures

(http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petition/33775.html).

Although neither membership nor signing the petition was

restricted by geography, it is worth placing the level of

CMS’ opposition in some local context. According to

National Statistics for 2010, Aberystwyth and district,

the nearest population centre to Nant y Moch, has 17,730

residents and an additional 8,000 students during term.

CMS contrast the anti Nant y Moch campaign with the much

greater number of people mobilised in Powys. Nant y Moch

windfarm will feed in to the same Cefn Coch substation as

proposed windfarms in Powys: Preserving Nant y Moch’s

landscape may depend upon the success of Montgomeryshire

Against Pylons and other groups. Consequently, CMS joined

the ‘Alliance’ of these groups which will contest a batch

of windfarm proposals at the public enquiry which began

in June 2012 and is scheduled to have its closing session

in May 2014 (http://bankssolutions.co.uk/powys/). While

CMS do not represent a large proportion of the

Aberystwyth and District population, active local support

for Nant y Moch falls to an even smaller, but similarly

passionate, Friends of the Earth (FoE) group.

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Figure 1: Strategic Search Areas in Wales

3.1 Opposition to Nant y Moch windfarm

CMS represents the landscape of the Cambrian Mountains as

having reached equilibrium, a near idyll to defend,

attempting to stabilise its meaning politically and so

exclude unwanted development (Trudeau, 2006). The CMS

discourse can be divided into a positive evocation of

windfarm-free landscape and a negative portrayal of

windfarm-dominated landscape. CMS evoke a heady mix of

values and affect in favour of the present landscape.

Mainly, the values appealed to are intrinsic:

universalism (beauty, peace, harmony, unity with nature),

and self-direction (freedom, independence, choosing own

goals) (c.f. Schwartz, 1992, 1994, PIRC, 2011). There is

also an appeal to more ambiguous values, however:

security (social order, sense of belonging), and

tradition (moderation). On affect, the positive emotions

appealed to arise primarily from the solitude and

tranquillity afforded by landscape. Space relationally,

the landscape of the present is alive with local people

who are united in their respect for the land, ‘folk’ who

are at home here, who are attached to these places, and

who brim with life-projects. In Secret Wales, Shepherd

Glyndwr Jones claims a right in summing up its

22

contradictory message of ‘empty landscape’ and ‘living

countryside’:

‘Keep everything as it is. There’s a need for these

lovely lonely places and we have the right to live

in such wonderful places as we always have done’

(translated from the Welsh).

The CMS draws together conservationist and farming

discourses, an accommodation that has not always been

easy in Wales, at least (c.f. Wynne-Jones, 2013). The

space-relational rights claim is for inhabitants who have

a long-term commitment to and love for the land.

Knowledges of farming, land management and environmental

stewardship made/make this landscape the near idyll it is

today. Via the right sort of tourism and agricultural

practices that support flood mitigation and carbon

sequestration, they can make it more alive, more

prosperous for everyone, and just as beautiful in future.

The alternative future imagined by the CMS does reach

beyond local landscape, engage with climate change, and

extend care to non-proximate others.

On the negative side, CMS portray a windfarm landscape as

ugly, noisy and not protecting the environment. The

knowledges driving windfarm development are flawed

because windfarms are unreliable, inefficient and

uneconomic. Emotionally, this landscape is disquieting

23

and dangerous, while outsiders who do not share the same

landscape values are not to be trusted. It is the

magnitude of proposals such as Nant y Moch that CMS find

unacceptable (c.f. Phadke, 2011): the number, height and

placement density of turbines. Married couple and

prominent members of CMS and the Ramblers, ‘Peter’ and

‘Barbara Walker’ note that contemporary wind turbines are

much taller than when TAN 8 was drafted, just one reason

it should be reviewed. The height of turbines at Nant y

Moch is indeed planned to be 146.5m compared to 100m at

Cefn Croes. Peter and Barbara liken large-scale windfarm

development to ‘industrial forestry’. Ceding that human

impacts such as Nant y Moch reservoir and farming in the

Cambrian Mountains are (now) constituent of the natural

environment, conifer plantations are an exception . As

Barbara says: ‘Forestry Commission trees do not grow on

us’ (sic).

On justice, CMS representations focus most on identifying

forms and practices of injustice rather than alternative

constructions. Spatial injustice is prominent in a number

of variants: local landscape is unfairly sacrificed for

(unviable) national (UK) and global ends, i.e. energy

security and climate change mitigation; the interests of

Wales are subsumed by an exploitive England (in the guise

of the UK); the needs/demands of cities are prioritised

over those of rural communities (c.f. Jones, 2011); urban

knowledges and values are privileged over local lay-

24

knowledges and rural values. We recall Zografos and

Martinez-Alier’s observation that the conflict over a

windfarm development in rural Catalonia reconstitutes

older centre-periphery antagonisms . As Soja observes of

the geography/spatiality of justice, it is ‘an integral

and formative component of justice itself, a vital part

of how justice and injustice are socially constructed and

evolve over time’ (c.f. Soja, 2010, p.1).

‘Vincent’ and ‘Patty Low’ have lived in their ‘beloved

home’ for 36 years, intending to retire in its secluded

setting. If Nant y Moch windfarm is developed, they have

no wish to stay, convinced that visual and noise impacts

will make life unbearable. Contrary to research cited by

developers (e.g. Dent & Sims, 2007), Vincent and Patty

claim the prospect of the windfarm makes their house

unsalable. In making his case on corporate and government

indifference, Vincent raised recognition as an important

dimension of justice (c.f. Fraser, 2000, 2001; Fraser &

Honneth, 2003). Social interaction plays a key role in

the formulation of individual senses of identity and

self-worth. In the recognition paradigm the failure to

value individual rural identity and difference positively

constitutes injustice. Vincent challenges the blanketing

of ‘national interest’ with the national economic

interest. For him, valuing landscape means justice ought

to interrogate both macro-geographic goods and financial

compensation. Part of Vincent’s claim is that urban bias

25

in SSE and the Department of Environment and Climate

Change’s approaches manifests as cultural domination:

‘It is the indifference to our plight that hurts the

most. Supposedly so clean and green, the conduct of

the wind industry, aided and abetted by DECC and the

Ministry for Environment and Sustainable Development

(Wales) towards its many victims is simply

appalling. To answer the question: should we, in the

national interest just put our head on the block and

put up with injustice? Clearly the answer is a

resounding no. From the bottom of our hearts we

believe that we are very much serving the national

interest.’

Meanwhile, the notion of community benefits is not only

suspect because it is limited to financial valuation of

landscape and is often considered as compensation or even

a bribe (c.f. Frey et al., 1996). Bounding community, and

thus determining just deserts, is as problematic in space

and time as bounding landscape. Our conceptual approach

regards even separating community and landscape as

problematic. Moreover, the everyday lived lives

constituting landscape are changed by the prospect of

community benefits even before the material manifestation

of windfarm development: values, affects and so relations

are set at odds. Vincent and Patty Low, for instance,

find themselves in a residential community divided on the

26

windfarm, a schism redefined by the prospect of community

benefits, monies keenly anticipated by some. The

opposition discourse is generally more sympathetic to

community-owned windfarms with the tacit acknowledgment

that they would be smaller and so have less impact on

landscape.

Echoing back to Jonathan Wilkinson’s words in the first

paragraph of our introduction, a lack of meaningful

participation appears to be the root of all injustices

felt by anti-windfarm campaigners. The Welsh government

is seen as failing to engage with communities affected by

windfarm development, and the right for people to have an

effective voice in decision-making that affects their

lives is at the very heart of social justice (c.f. Smith,

1994). Anti-windfarm campaigners particularly, but also a

wider pool of concerned people encountered in this

research, including some who are actively pro-windfarm,

are critical of TAN 8. Peter and Barbara Walker highlight

the institutional limitations on the values permitted in

public consultation on policy-making and an inherent

prejudice against affect. TAN 8 discounted many

dissenting responses, they claim, because they were

negative expressions of emotion rather than the

‘constructive’ rational critique institutionally

prescribed. Subsequent institutional arrangements for

public consultation on windfarm development are also

criticised by anti-windfarm campaigners. Closely linked

27

to participation are concerns about how landscape is

valued and especially the limits to exclusively rational,

utilitarian and market approaches.

At a CMS public meeting in Aberystwyth on 9 March 2012

the theme was ‘Windpower - Benefit or Burden?’ In

contrast to public meetings elsewhere in mid-Wales,

however, there was little attempt at balancing arguments

and so ‘burden’ was the pervading theme. That said, ‘John

King’, who organised other public meetings on windfarm

development, observes that an adversarial approach and

lack of facilitation tends to render them counter-

productive anyway. Moreover, they are wholly ineffective

because there is no feedback mechanism to policy making.

In a similar vein, Stevenson observes that merely

gathering ‘stakeholders’ together does not constitute

participatory planning, proposing that appropriately

skilled facilitators are needed . Currently, it is

through state institutions that such planning must be

tested, and Stevenson suggests that ‘the policy process

cannot actually overcome contradictions and conflict.

Instead, encompassing them may be a more fruitful way

forward than attempts at consensus’ .

In Aberystwyth, one audience member declaimed on windfarm

development possibly desecrating the un-located graves of

Owain Glyndŵr’s army killed in the Battle of Mynydd

Hyddgen in 1401 in a revolt against English rule. This

28

concern contrasts with pro-windfarm arguments which tend

to focus on the benefits of mitigating climate change to

future generations. Here, discarded histories and

alternative futures clash, both being problematic to

locate precisely in space and/or time. We recall Brace

and Geoghegan’s recognition of landscape as spatially and

temporally both with us and beyond us. In the meeting,

panellist Myfanwy Alexander, a Powys County Councillor,

mined another historical vein of nationalist critique,

likening the harnessing of Wales’ wind by corporations

and the export of energy to England to previous resource

injustices such as the exploitation of slate, coal and

water (see for instance Evans, 1991). Alexander claimed a

national proprietary right to the wind, but this did not

result in any discussion about nationalising windfarm

development, electricity generation or supply . The

landscape of everyday, lived life is clearly invested

with conflicting past, present and future passions,

politics and values which, we argue, should feature in

any construction of justice. Although issues may prove

incommensurable and irresolvable, interrogating this

laden landscape can lead to a different appreciation of

justice.

Figure 3: The visual landscape around Nant y Moch

reservoir

3.2 The case for Nant y Moch windfarm

29

Our analysis of the arguments supporting Nant y Moch

windfarm centres on interviews with two local

professionals working for SSE. From this close focus, our

analysis ‘fans out’ to encompass wider research findings.

Once again, though we have attempted to differentiate the

data, landscape and justice tend to be entangled. The

everyday lives of our two professionals are thoroughly

entangled with local landscape, including personal

contact with opposition campaigners. Both professionals

are intent on the justice of developing the windfarm.

Their accounts are not presented as typical, but rather

as particular and illustrative of constructions of

landscape and justice antithetic to those of anti-

windfarm campaigns. ‘Siân James’ has worked as Community

Liaison officer on Nant Y Moch windfarm for four years,

and SSE emphasise Siân’s local identity, residence and

bilingualism. Believing that the project is good for the

area is key to Siân’s motivation. ‘Tom Daniels’ lives

locally and is personally committed to the area, working

for a local renewable energy consultancy contracted to

SSE on the Nant Y Moch proposal. Tom has a family

background of peace, justice and environmental activism,

and his social network is highly motivated to (global)

environmental protection.

Especially when compared to opposition opinions, the

views of windfarm advocates highlight the subjective

nature of valuing the experience of landscape, an

30

acknowledged issue in a phenomenological approach. The

wilderness which the CMS values as an experience of

beauty and harmony with nature, Siân views as ugly and

intimidating: ‘a scary place because it’s so remote’.

Limiting windfarm development to certain areas via TAN 8

exacerbates problems of acceptance, Siân believes, while

exempting National Parks reinforces the perception that

windfarms devalue the landscape (National Parks and AONBs

cover 24% of Wales and contain few wind turbines, c.f.

Cowell, 2010). Siân contrasts windfarms with Trawsfynydd

nuclear power station, now defunct, which comprises

massive concrete buildings and a pylon corridor in

Snowdonia National Park. She asks why developing

windfarms in Wales in the early 21st Century faces greater

opposition than did Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in

the mid 20th Century: Wasn’t Trawsfynydd a more monstrous,

disquieting and dangerous landscape incursion than wind

turbines? Wasn’t the pylon corridor just as intrusive?

Have our views on the value of visual landscape compared

to the benefits of electricity supply changed so much?

Tom Daniels has some sympathy with people who value

‘natural’ landscape but struggles with an approach where

he considers that National Parks are frozen in some

‘1950s or 60s aesthetic’. We mark that politics can

invest landscapes such as National Parks with an

exclusionary moral geography (Matless, 1997). In the

current political context of the UK, it is open to

31

question whether the challenge of mitigating climate

change, or indeed the opportunity for corporate profit,

will result in the social reconfiguration of such moral

geography (see for instance Winnet, 2012, and on the

other hand Gilligan, 2012 & Malnick, 2013a). Tom believes

people who have grown up in an area are more likely to

recognise that landscape is the product of human

intervention and accept land use changes than people

moving in to retire . Research on place attachment

suggests a more complex relation, however (c.f. Devine-

Wright, 2009, Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010). While our

phenomenological approach to landscape would not

privilege duration and quality of dwelling, we suggest

that determining justice will demand debating the

associated values, knowledges, passions and relations. On

how industrial development becomes heritage landscape,

Tom notes that old mine-workings in the Cambrian

Mountains have to be treated as archaeological remains of

cultural value when ‘some of them are horrendous –

concrete monstrosities’. Though Tom currently sees no

reason to build a windfarm in a National Park, if the

choice was ‘some much more serious disruption’ elsewhere,

he would countenance such a development.

Often, their advocates consider that windfarms add value

to landscape. Views range from ‘I don’t mind them’ to ‘I

think they’re beautiful’. We observe the connection

between such aesthetic valuations and the sense of

32

‘justice being done’ which some informants feel is almost

literally inscribed in space and time as the turbine

blades revolve. On the other hand, most research

informants held there to be some limit on windfarm

development, landscapes where wind turbines should not be

located. For example, Tom Daniels would not wish to see a

windfarm in certain places ‘because there is some value

in an even more wild landscape than you can have with a

windfarm for its aesthetic or recreational value or all

sorts of other things’. Generally, such exempted

landscapes were either vaguely defined or identified with

specific places which the informant held inviolable.

The landscape of the pro-windfarm lobby extends to

include distant others in space, time and arguably

materiality via concern for their welfare. Although not

born of subjective experience, this concern is no less

passionate than that of anti-windfarm campaigners for

more locally bounded landscape. The dominant value in the

pro-windfarm landscape is protecting the environment.

While social justice is also in play as a global value,

it tends to elide social justice in the local here and

now. The space-relationality exhibited centres on a

global sense of responsibility (Massey, 2004). Once

again, however, responsibility for specific local people

in the immediate landscape tends to be sacrificed for the

greater good. Derived from faith in natural science, an

33

underlying ‘reason’ defines the passions, values and

space-relations of pro-windfarm landscapes.

The dominant view among supports of windfarms is that

compared to the injustices that climate change brings to

others in space and time, any despoiling of local

landscape is minor: The imperative is reducing the

greater injustice. Moreover, any sense of landscape

despoilment is subjective and confined to the visual. As

we have seen, the landscape critique of windfarm

opponents does transcend the visual aesthetic, though

that is its primary driver. Both Siân James and Tome

Daniels expressed reservations about how community is

defined in institutional processes of consultation. They

also perceived both conceptual and practical problems in

the equation of community benefits with justice.

Expressing doubts about the ethos of community benefits,

Siân questioned whether windfarm development constitutes

any form of injustice:

‘In a way you can’t win because the very fact there

is a community fund suggests then that it is

compensation and that it’s a negative thing that’s

happening. I think the community fund is, for me,

it’s a bonus that comes with a windfarm, if a region

is welcoming it. But it’s not, I don’t think it

should be seen as a compensation, and it’s not for

individuals’.

34

Siân does not agree with the argument that wind is

another Welsh resource being exploited by regimes of

exogenous capital accumulation, countering that wind is

Wales’ opportunity to contribute to transnational energy

security and mitigate climate change, and that Wales

benefits directly (see for instance Clubb, 2013; Dafis,

2013). Critics argue that payments benefit only a small

number of landowners, predominantly the Forestry

Commission of Wales (FCWii), a Welsh government

department. Payments to landowners from developers are

distinct from community benefits.

Tom Daniels is aware that his values with respect to

climate change – the intra and intergenerational justice

of sustainable development – are not drivers for SSE. Tom

acknowledges a personal tension in working with a

corporation which does not share the anti-nuclear,

individual and community-scale, knowledge-sharing ethos

historically associated with wind-power . Although,

development by corporations would not be Tom’s socio-

technical ideal, given the urgency of climate change and

the investment needed to therefore build large-scale

windfarms quickly, he believes it is the only option.

Affected communities’ attitudes to windfarms would be

ii Since 10 April 2010 the FCW has been incorporated into a new body,

Natural Resources Wales, along with the Countryside Council for Wales

and Environment Agency Wales.

35

different if there was a sense of all being in this

together, Tom believes, deploying a global relationality.

Relatedly, Siân James believes the public has a poor

understanding of windfarm technology, which undermines

any sense of social solidarity with respect to mitigating

global climate change. With government support

vacillating, media coverage divided, corporate developers

and RenewableUK mistrusted, Siân understands why people

do not know what to believe: ‘(T)here doesn’t seem to be

any kind of clean source that you can point people to and

go, ‘these are the facts’’

A thick strand of inter and intragenerational

distributive justice connects the pro-windfarm discourse

(e.g. Gardiner, 2004; Paavola & Adger, 2006; Parks &

Roberts, 2010). This tends to define climate justice and

is post-political, entertaining no agonism (c.f.

Chatterton et al., 2013; Barrett, 2013). Moreover, it

allows little or no space for justice at scales other

than the global, its abstracted utilitarianism excluding

both the particular local and the individual (c.f.

Bulkeley et al., 2013; Steele et al., 2012, Harris, 2010).

Such utilitarian approaches are imbued with a temporality

which tends to elide history alongside geography,

political participation and the individual in

prioritising a future social well-being (c.f. Ikeme,

2003).

36

4. Towards landscape justice in windfarm development

In this section, we review and evaluate our findings.

Acknowledging the limitations of a case study, we then

formulate a conception of ‘landscape justice’ which

merits further research with respect to climate change,

or at least mitigation and adaptation measures. Let us

roughly restate our findings, beginning with the

opposition discourse which primarily values protecting

local landscape through stewardship. Solitude is the

dominant source of affect, while a shared sense of

individuals belonging in place rather than simply

residence is the defining relationality. The spatiality

which emerges is definitively local with national and

global space-relations seemingly evoked when politically

expedient. The nationalist element of the discourse is

split on whether windfarm development constitutes

economic development or exploitation (e.g. Dafis, 2013;

Batcup, 2013). The temporality of the opposition

landscape is set firmly in the present but includes

respect for favoured histories and is not without a

future imaginary. The appeal for a construction of

justice which can accommodate this landscape is spatially

grounded in the rural local. It seeks recognition and

participation via institutional processes which

facilitate alternative landscape valuations. Attending to

the nature rather than the amount of payments, community

37

benefits are not regarded as a satisfactory practice of

justice.

The pro-windfarm discourse also values protecting the

environment, but represented globally. Scientific reason

dictates exploiting local landscape resources to protect

this global environment. The wilderness of local

landscape does not stir a positive emotional connection

but rather presents as a near empty space through which

to practice global justice. Again, the space-

relationality of the discourse centres on global

responsibility. Though national energy security also

features, there is space only for a strictly bounded and

policed local space-relationality. The typical practices

via which developers bound community restricts

recognition and participation while also precluding

possibilities of regional, national and international

solidarity. The temporality of the discourse is

predominantly futuristic with the (carbon guilty) past

and (continuingly profligate) present given short-shrift

morally. Defining justice is a sweeping utilitarian,

inter- and intragenerational distributive justice that

elides history, geography, ethics and politics. Though

abstract, this representation of justice is comparative

in time and space: The imperative to mitigate future

climate change everywhere outweighs contemporary, local

and particular environmental/social justice concerns. The

pro-windfarm discourse could not defend institutional

38

processes of doing justice very convincingly, however,

neither TAN 8 public consultation nor defining community

and deciding benefits.

With respect to previous research on windfarm development

and landscape, we believe our results yield: (i) a deeper

appreciation of the exclusion of ‘other’ voices in

deciding outcomes; (ii) a heightened awareness that how

public space is created and how arguments are made,

received and facilitated therein is critically important

to just outcomes; (iii) a renewed interest in how

landscape, wind and energy ought to be valued. We concur

with Wolsink who concludes that early and through-going

local representation of landscape values in institutional

planning processes is crucial to public acceptance of

windfarms . In the words of one research informant,

current processes yield ‘the worst of both worlds’.

Planning applications for onshore windfarms above 50MW

are referred to the Planning Inspectorate and, provided

the developer has followed procedures, are likely to be

approved (e.g. Malnick, 2013b). This does not necessarily

serve a wider climate justice, howeveriii. As Barclay

(2012) recorded, meanwhile, almost half of smaller

proposals in the UK are rejected because of concerns for

local landscape.

Rural stewardship versus cosmopolitan responsibility;

lay-knowledges versus scientific reason; affect versus

39

objectivity; local versus global; present versus

future... Although not binaries, anti and pro-windfarm

discourses are clearly deeply antagonistic on values,

knowledges, emotions, relations, spatialities and

temporalities, resulting in conflicting representations

of landscape and justice. This antagonism constrains the

potential of an effective means of climate change

mitigation (Zografos & Martinez Alier, 2009) and the

development of spatially extensive solidarities in this

regard (Chatterton et al. 2013). We contend that this

antagonism stems from the way landscape, including the

wind blowing through it, is valued (c.f. Cowell, 2007,

2010; Cowell et al., 2011): Landscape cannot be subject

to exchange value and the machinations of the market,

while there can be no justice in community benefits which

assume windfarm development as a harm . Freed from this

constraint, landscape can act as a conceptual bridge from

iii Serving a wider climate justice would hold only if we were ‘all in

this together’, as Tom Daniels put it, i.e. if, in our case, Nant y

Moch windfarm was part of a global strategy of effective climate

change mitigation. Consider, however, that the United Nations

Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the

Parties (COP) process has failed to secure a consensus or implement

effective global measures. Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ Low Carbon Economy

Index reports that the world economy’s decarbonization rate is

actually decreasing (PwC, 2012). In 2011, it stood at just 0.7%

compared to the more than 5% necessary to achieve a 450 parts per

million atmospheric carbon dioxide stabilization and constrain global

warming to 2°C by 2050 (e.g. Pielke 2010).

40

local rights to the global commons, jumping scales to

help with re-imagining a different construction and

practices of justice. Here we understand the (global)

commons as collectively shared resources, non-commodified

means to fulfil social needs (De Angelis, 2003).

4.1 Towards landscape justice

What construction of justice does our reconsideration of

landscape suggest? Our findings suggest that ‘landscape

justice’ (our shorthand) must accommodate alternative

landscape valuations, lay-knowledges, emotions, life

projects, dwelling, and temporally shifting space-

relations. Proposing the Right to Landscape (RTL), Egoz

et al. conclude that it implies departing from the

dominant economic paradigm, focussing instead on human

wellbeing which extends to equity and social justice .

Drawing a complementary parallel between landscape and

human rights, they argue that landscape transcends the

boundaries of the nation-state and can thus be employed

as a universal analytical concept. Twenty-first century

threats to nature’s habitats, especially climate change,

are so ‘heightened’ that new analytical approaches are

needed. An expansive definition of landscape frames

together the tangible need for survival with intangible

spiritual, emotional and psychological needs

quintessential to human experience. Like Brace and

41

Geoghegan, Egoz et al. argue that the very difficulty of

defining landscape adds to its analytical potential:

‘It is precisely this elasticity that makes landscape

a potent term to explore new theories that relate to

the value of landscape. By extending the spatial

social arena to embrace political ethical ones, we

explore ways in which landscape could become a

positive tool to promote social justice’ .

Given the lack of global unanimity on what constitutes

a ‘right’ , we will broaden our consideration of

landscape justice. Sandel advocates ‘a politics of the

common good’ which raises both moral and particular

questions, entailing robust collective reasoning and

the maintenance of space for public debate .

Pertinently, Article 5 of the European Landscape

Convention (ELC) commits signatories, including the UK,

to establishing procedures for the participation of the

public, local and regional authorities and other interested

parties in the definition and implementation of landscape

policies (Council of Europe, 2000). Olwig interrogates

the ELC, concluding that whose perceptions define

landscape is ‘a question of justice, morality and the

law of the land’ (Olwig, 2005, p.297). The global reach

of climate change extends the notion of ‘interested

parties’ entitled to participate in robust collective

reasoning on, in our case, windfarm development,

42

problematising too national law. Sandel continues:

‘Justice is not only about the right way to distribute

things. It is also about the right way to value things’

. He critiques the reach of markets, arguing that there

are some things money cannot buy and others it should

not. In tune with Egoz et al., we propose that this

includes landscape as global commons.

Developing our approach further, we seek to link it more

closely to dwelling, everyday meaning and materiality,

and to the practicable. Rather than more transcendental

questions, such as ‘what would be perfectly just

institutions?’, Sen asks ‘how would justice be advanced?’

. He builds on a comparative, ‘realisation-focused’

tradition of thought which seeks to reduce injustice

rather than hypothesize a social contract. Spatially, in

tune with a landscape approach, Sen argues that public

reasoning about justice must transcend regional or

national boundaries because (i) the interests of others

may be involved and (ii) the perspective of others may

broaden the investigation and avoid parochialism. Not all

questions of justice can be decided, though: Alternative

arguments may prove reasonable and irresolvable. Sen

illustrates the non-commensurability of different, though

reasonable justice claims, the ‘irreducible diversity

between distinct objects of value’ (p.395). This

pluralistic limit on justice does not indicate failure,

but is to be celebrated as the path to a new theory – and

43

practice - able to absorb difference and dissensus. We

note here radical democracy’s inherent notion of

agonistic pluralism and its imperative for institutional

change to make space for dissent .

5. Conclusion

The development of wind energy, and surely climate change

mitigation and adaptation measures generally, demands a

new ethic (c.f. Phadke, 2011). This ethic must be

mediated locally and have landscapes/dwelling here and

there in space and time at its heart. Each landscape,

considered for development merits assessment as unique in

its own terms, i.e. the terms of all who value the

landscape and the development. Our emerging notion of

landscape justice consciously blends elements of

deontological, virtue and consequentialist ethics,

combining the logics of the RtL, Sandel’s limit to

markets and Sen’s comparative conception of justice. This

resonates with the climate justice politics of

solidarity, the commons and antagonism proposed by

Chatterton et al. (2012). Moreover, landscape justice

begs more comparison with conceptions of environmental

justice. To our findings on democratic exclusion,

creating public space and valuing landscape, we can add

an understanding that justice with respect to landscape

may be irresolvable across space and time, that arguments

may be incommensurable. That said, Sen allows that the

44

act of engaging in debate serves justice well. Following

Brace and Geoghegan, we would add that this depends on an

engagement that recognises landscape as being with us but

also beyond us, both spatially and temporally, and as

involving multiple trajectories and a simultaneity of

stories so far (Brace and Geoghegan, 2011): Landscape

justice helps climate change move between both spatial

and temporal scales and increases relational

understandings. Enlightened facilitation in institutional

processes is key to generative and just outcomes: While

the state persists, reducing landscape injustice will

involve radical changes in the planning process and its

institutions.

Sen’s notion of public reasoning benefitting from the

transcendence of national boundaries might be brought to

bear in arguments over windfarm developments in

particular landscapes compared with loss and damage due

to climate change in landscapes elsewhere. The arguments

of citizens from frontline climate change states such as

Tuvalu, Maldives and Bangladesh would be sure to

challenge parochialism in collective reasoning about the

common good in mid-Wales. Following Egoz et al. (2012),

we suggest that the validity of such testimonies could

only be established beyond the logics of capitalism,

focussing not on cost-benefit analyses but rather on

well-being, equity and social justice. Accepting the loss

and damage caused by climate change, particularly in

45

poorer countries, as the severest injustice is not the

same as accepting that large corporations developing

windfarms as quickly as possible will reduce this

injustice, whether or not such development foments local

injustice.

References

46