Participatory engagement and social research: methods toolkit

8. Limitations and open issues

A critical point to reiterate is that a core function of SEIA techniques is to involve communities in the planning and policy making process, giving them a voice, and understanding how a development or intervention may impact upon the locality. In other words, the aim of SEIA techniques is to understand the community and stakeholder context, and not to convince them of the merits of a development or intervention. Whilst thorough and early SEIA can help to inform engagement, communication and governance strategies in a way that can enhance the likelihood of getting community support, it should be remembered that sometimes the most appropriate outcome from an SEIA process is that a development or intervention does not go ahead if it transpires that the negative impacts on the communities or stakeholders will be too great.

Furthermore, a number of the SEIA techniques discussed in this Toolkit have their foundations in land-based energy projects or infrastructure. In a coastal and marine context, it may be harder to define ‘the community’ or ‘affected stakeholders’ because geographical distance and processes such as ocean currents, locations of fishing grounds, and connectivity between ports/settlements can make a sense of place and of ‘ownership’ harder to delineate on a map. When conducting SEIA for offshore renewables, for example, additional consideration hence ought to be given to who counts as ‘the community,’ and to ensuring that an appropriate range of affected places and stakeholders are engaged. Research for ClimateXChange by Rudolph et al (2015) explores how to do this. As outlined earlier, whilst social science has long been interested in questions of the sea and coasts, understandings of systematic methodologies for the specificities of a marine context are still emerging.

It should also be recognised that knowledge of methods for monitoring impacts post-consent and post-implementation is less well-developed. It is especially challenging to find best practices for monitoring socio-economic impacts for offshore renewable projects, given that technologies are only starting to reach large-scale deployment globally. It will thus be vital to elaborate techniques for ongoing monitoring of social impacts from early deployments in Scotland such as Beatrice and the EOWDC (European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre) in Aberdeen.