Protecting wild land from wind farms in a post-EU Scotland

Abstract

Scotland is one of the places in Europe to have experienced significant wind farm development over recent years. Concern about impacts on wild land has resulted in legal challenges based on European Union (EU) law. This article analyses whether wild land can be protected from wind farms and the differences that the United Kingdom departure from the EU will make. It considers the concept of 'wild land' compared with 'wilderness', analyses the legal basis (if any) for wild land protection and examines potential impacts from wind farms. It highlights the significance of EU environmental law, particularly nature conservation and environmental assessment law, and analyses recent Scottish jurisprudence that has applied this. The role of the European Commission and Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is emphasised as a key part of EU environmental law. The article asks whether relevant global and regional environmental agreements can effectively replace the content of the substantive law and context of the Commission and CJEU. Four environmental agreements and two related compliance procedures are briefly evaluated. The conclusion is that while EU law does not directly provide protection for wild land, it is considerably stronger than the international environmental agreements that may replace it.

Lessons learnt in global biodiversity governance

“…(Anyone denying the significance of national politics need only look as far as the elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro as profound evidence to the contrary.) And the point is certainly hammered home by Marsden (2018), who demonstrated the impending uncertainty over conservation policy and options as Brexit was nearing Scotland, despite overarching convention architecture offered by the Aarhus Convention on public participation, the Ramsar Convention, the Bern Convention, and others; and Guarino et al (2017), who explore the role agriculture plays in linking ecosystems with "techno-systems" in Italy. Lim (2016) also emphasizes the importance of understanding each level of political organization for effective transboundary biodiversity governance.…”

“…We are just beginning to see scholars respond to the twinned questions of competing priorities (energy production, biodiversity conservation, eradication of invasive species, carbon sequestration) and institutional changes that are currently taking place; these themes come together, for example, in Simon Marsden's piece on protecting wild lands in Scotland from wind energy development in a post-Brexit United Kingdom (Marsden, 2018). Future research could ask how such priorities play out across different issue areas relevant for biodiversity governance; this is tied very closely to the potential for enhancing coordination and coherence across these sectors, and will contribute to ongoing nexus debates and IPBES assessments.…”

Parques eólicos e rede natura: unha análise desde o marco da xustiza enerxética para o caso da serra do xistral

“…No mesmo senso, os programas de vixilancia e seguimento teñen sido criticados por ser ferramentas pouco flexibles e de reducida utilidade (Arenas e Vidal 2012). Ademais, tal e como acontece no caso de Escocia, onde os impactos nas turbeiras de cobertor polo desenvolvemento eólico tamén xeraron controversias ambientais (Marsden 2018), tampouco foron contemplados os efectos a longo prazo nos hábitats derivados da instalación dos parques eólicos (Wawrzyczek et al 2018). En definitiva, o resultado da ineficacia das avaliacións de impacto ambiental, das medidas correctoras e dos plans de vixilancia facilitaron que se teñan rexistrado importantes perdas de valores na Serra do Xistral (Gómez-Orellana et al 2014).…”

Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Natura 2000 Network: Introducing Proxy Indicators and Conflict Risk in Greece

“…Since the risk analysis exercise is limited to only two CES categories, this result is in our opinion a bare minimum of the various other negative impacts that may result if all proposed wind turbines are developed. Recent reviews agree that the full ramifications of certain industrial-scale renewable energy developments are poorly studied and social impacts may be high, especially within protected areas and wild land areas [79][80][81]. Moreover, other similarly widespread resource development problems such as touristic and urban sprawl, road-building, mining and small hydro-electric plant developments could also be used to explore conflict risk with CES attributes in protected areas, in a similar manner.…”

“…More attention is needed to landscape-scale research and conservation, especially targeting both highly valued cultural landscapes [3,112] and wilderness (or wild land) areas [81,113]. This ties in with EU policy requirements for high nature value farming [114] and the many modern changes and challenges to European landscapes [79,115,116]. In Greece, particular attention to the conflicts created by industrial wind farm development should be immediately reviewed at the landscape scale.…”