Offshore renewables - social impact: two way conversation with the people of Scotland

7 Reflections on Round 1 Dialogue and Implications for Round 2

Overview of chapter

This chapter provides a reflection on learning from the Round 1 dialogue about:

• Values and impacts explored
• Reflecting on the analytical framework

7.1 The final section discusses how this learning fed into and informed the design of Round 2. Values and impacts explored

The Round 1 dialogues enable participants to talk freely about the values that were important to them and provided us with a useful set of value clusters. These indicate that what is important to people goes well beyond the socio-economic issues which have often been the main focus of social impact assessment.

Looking at how the value clusters emerging from Round 1 compare with Vanclay’s categories, we found that while the sets of values map quite well onto these categories, there is a clear emphasis on two categories (Way of life and Community), while two further categories (Personal and property rights and Fears and aspirations), while relevant to a number of clusters, were not generally used as headline categories but seemed to work better as cross-cutting themes. This is reflected in Table 7.1.

Table 7.1 Match between public dialogue value clusters and Vanclay’s SIA categories

SIA category

Way of life

Value cluster

Family / family life / intergenerational issues

Description

This covers family (children, grandchildren, partners/spouses), family life (including pets) and intergenerational issues.

Important characteristics of this value cluster are family support, love, relationships; future focus in terms of future generations and legacy; and activities with families.

SIA category

Way of life

Value cluster

Jobs / career / employment

Description

This covers jobs and employment from a personal perspective, in terms of careers and personal development, the individual experience of both employment and unemployment and work/life balance

SIA category

Way of life

Value cluster

Money / cost of living

Description

This covers money and finances from an individual perspective, including personal expenses and the elements of financial stability and security or insecurity.

While this value cluster focuses on the individual perspective, individuals see their own financial stability and security as being closely related to the local economy.

SIA category

Community

Value cluster

Local jobs / local industry / community sustainability

Description

This value cluster covers jobs and economic activities from the perspective of the local community and economy. An important characteristic emphasised by members of the public is the sustainability of local economic activities and its role in supporting wider community sustainability and development. This makes training, particularly for younger people, a key factor.

Some elements that may vary depending on location are:

Type of valued economic activities (e.g. tourism, innovative technologies, etc.)

Scale of economic activity is particularly important for small communities

SIA category

Community

Value cluster

Transport connections / technology connections

Description

This value cluster covers the transport connections and communications technologies (internet, phone) that make places accessible or inaccessible. Transport connections included the quality of infrastructure (e.g. roads) and services (e.g. public transport, planes, trains and ferries).

Communications technologies include broadband and phone connectivity.

SIA category

Community

Value cluster

Education / shops / housing / healthcare

Description

This cluster covers key local amenities and services. Education includes educational institutions such as schools and universities as well as studying and learning.

Shopping includes local shops and facilities and the range of types of shops and goods available. Housing refers mainly to availability but also to the type or quality of housing.

Healthcare covers both being and staying healthy and active as well as healthcare facilities and services such as GPs, hospitals and the NHS.

SIA category

Community

Value cluster

Socialising / recreation / parks / leisure

Description

This value cluster covers recreational activities, amenities, pastimes and services that combine to contribute to the cultural and social life of a community. It includes both the facilities for socialising and recreation (e.g. parks, playing fields, golf courses, community halls, pubs, etc.) and activities ranging from dancing, photography and other cultural activities, through travelling, participating in and watching sports to meeting up with friends.

SIA category

Community

Value cluster

Local identity / cultural heritage / Gaelic

Description

This relates to features of a community that contribute to local identity and cultural heritage, with a focus on the culture and community aspects. The main features mentioned by dialogue participants were: native Gaelic language (but only on Islay), place names, cultural heritage (museums, archaeological sites) and retaining local values and identity through activities such as highland games and ploughing matches and through traditional farming practices.

Honesty / safe environment: safety, security, honesty, healthy environment, freedom.

SIA category

Community

Value cluster

Friends / being involved / supporting others

Description

The essence of this value cluster is its emphasis on social networks, social capital or the bonds of trust and reciprocity between people. The elements of the cluster are having friends and neighbours; actively engaging with others by talking to people, going to meetings and working in the community; and supporting other people, this contributes to creating a sense of belonging and goodwill within the community.

SIA category

Environment

Value cluster

Connection to nature / landscape / views

Description

This value cluster focuses on the natural environment, both in terms of its role contributing to health and wellbeing (use values) as well as the importance of the natural environment for its own sake (intrinsic values).

The main aspects were described as having a real physical connection to nature, for example through being outdoors and engaging in activities such as fishing, bird watching and walking; elements of the natural environment including birds, sea mammals, beaches, etc as well as landscape / seascape, weather and lack of pollution. Connection to nature was also associated with the quality of peace and quiet.

SIA category

Political and decision-making systems

Value cluster

Political / decision-making systems

Description

This category covers political and decision-making institutions and processes (Government, government organisations), the activity of politics at both the national and local community scales (democracy and community action) and the outcomes or expression of this activity (the future of Scotland, current affairs, changes for the better).

The focus on the links between decision makers and institutions with communities and their organisations makes this value cluster relevant to both social or community capital and institutional resilience.

Seven of Vanclay’s higher-level categories (Way of life, Community, Culture, Health and wellbeing, Environment, Political and decision-making systems and Personal and property rights) form a useful framework for structuring the range of social values. The remaining category, “Fears and Aspirations” did not map clearly across to the value clusters and we found that much of the content of this category fitted into value clusters under other categories, as fears and aspirations about, for example, the future of the local community, personal or family health and wellbeing, etc. The category seems to be more about how people discuss their values, what their fears and aspirations are in relation to the values and the impacts on them. This category appears to cut across the other value clusters and on balance we felt that it was clearer to group the values that relate to it under the more tangible categories.

Working with a small number of categories facilitates understanding of the different impact types. However, the categories need to be unpacked and described as meaningful impacts or groups of impacts and this is the function of the new value clusters emerging from the Round 1 dialogue.

Starting from what is important or valued (rather than from the types of impact) these clusters reflect the way that people talk about the things that matter to them and think about how these might be affected in the future, both positively and negatively. Each cluster is significant in its own right; looked at in relation to other clusters, it is possible to see how impacts on values interact to create cumulative or knock-on effects, for example in terms of local residents’ perceptions of the implications of offshore renewables plans or strategies for their own lives.

The achievement of the Round 1 dialogue is to provide descriptions of the values within each of these categories in terms that reflect the lived experience of people in Scotland, particularly those living in coastal communities in different parts of the country. The clusters of values provide a set of reference descriptions that can be used to prompt discussion, to examine how particular values are expressed in different contexts or settings and to explore how the values could be impacted by activities - in the case of this project by the development of offshore renewables. By taking a bottom-up approach we have ground-truthed the categories, showing how people talk about them, both in terms of their intrinsic value or importance and of how they may be impacted.

Further, within the discussion of the scenarios, participants were asked to look at the impacts of offshore renewables on the things they had identified as important. The findings on impacts provide useful material on the types of issues that are likely to be raised within SIAs of offshore renewables plans and strategies.

7.2 Reflecting on resilience and social capital

While SIA impact categories proved to be valuable as a structuring tool, we found that it did not help us to understand the relationships between the different things of value or to get a sense of the significance of impacts on them or of a combination of impacts.

As discussed in the chapter 2, a resilience capacities approach (focusing on five core types of resilience capacities: social, economic, institutional, infrastructure resilience capacities and community capital) looks at the factors that help communities to function effectively. Some of these capacities, or lack of them, came out strongly in the workshops, for example in the discussions of transport and communications connections (infrastructural resilience capacities), relationships with support structures and decision-making institutions outside the community (institutional resilience capacities) and community networks and support (community capital). Similarly, many of the participants’ questions focused on economic and social resilience categories, such as the type, number and quality of new local jobs (economic resilience) and the importance of suitable local employment opportunities for retaining younger people and young families to help maintain a more even age structure within remote coastal communities (social resilience).

This suggests that resilience may be useful not just for thinking about coping with emergencies (resilience as resistance or as the capacity to bounce back from shocks) but that it is also relevant to sustainability, as the capacity to adapt and transform in order to ensure the maintenance and identity of the individual or community. The concept of resilience capacities provides a way of considering values in terms of the functions they facilitate or enable rather than focusing on individual or social preferences and priorities.

Within this framing, social capital can be equated to the key resilience capacity of ‘community capital’. This is the way that Cutter et al (2010:9) use the term: ‘community capital, captures the relationships that exist between individuals and their larger neighborhoods and communities. The community capital sub-index embodies what many refer to as social capital.’

In terms of the analytical framework, resilience capacities provide a way of linking the things that people within a particular community or area consider are important to sustainability: the more vulnerable to external impacts these capacities, the less resilient or sustainable the community. Key things that are important for each of the five resilience capacities could be identified at the start of the SIA process and used to scope the situation of the community and identify vulnerabilities or potential (that is, which capacities need to be strengthened and which need to be protected). SIA impact categories could then be used for the assessment, as mapping impact categories would provide a means of getting the granularity required. Table 7.2 shows how the resilience capacities map onto Vanclay categories and the value clusters emerging from the dialogue.

Table 7.2 Mapping resilience capacities onto SIA categories and value clusters

SIA category

Way of life

Resilience capacity

Social resilience

Value cluster

Family / family life / intergenerational issues

SIA category

Way of life

Resilience capacity

Economic resilience

Value cluster

Jobs / career / employment

SIA category

Way of life

Resilience capacity

Economic resilience

Value cluster

Money / cost of living

SIA category

Community

Resilience capacity

Economic resilience

Value cluster

Local jobs / local industry / community sustainability

SIA category

Community

Resilience capacity

Infrastructure resilience

Value cluster

Transport connections / technology connections

SIA category

Community

Resilience capacity

Infrastructure resilience

Value cluster

Education / shops / housing / healthcare

SIA category

Community

Resilience capacity

Community capital

Value cluster

Socialising / recreation / parks / leisure

SIA category

Community

Resilience capacity

Community capital

Value cluster

Local identity / cultural heritage / Gaelic

SIA category

Community

Resilience capacity

Community capital

Value cluster

Friends / being involved / supporting others

SIA category

Environment

Resilience capacity

(Natural) Infrastructure resilience

Value cluster

Connection to nature / landscape / views

SIA category

Political and decision making systems

Resilience capacity

Institutional resilience

Value cluster

Political / decision-making systems

During the Round 1 workshops several comments reflected a lack of trust or clarity about the functioning of institutions and their processes that is relevant to the resilience framework. This relates to institutional resilience or the institutional arrangements and governance that exists in a place for the management of public interest issues (such as development) and the capacity of citizens to engage with these processes (Twigger-Ross et al, 2014). This is an example of ‘linking’ capital which enables social networks (e.g. a community group) to connect ‘upwards’ through hierarchal structures in order to gain access to resources, ideas and influence over decision-making through formal institutions (e.g. local authorities, Marine Scotland etc) that exist beyond the community (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000).

In some cases the questions asked by participants reflected a general lack of awareness about the processes and governance opportunities available to members of the public and affected communities: “would the local peoples’ input be taken on-board?” (Islay Participant); and “before this stage, there would be lots of research done?” (St Andrews Participant) These questions evidence a general lack of clarity of process which in itself is indicative of poor linking capital and limited institutional resilience / capacity, both of which would limit peoples’ potential to participate in the decisions (e.g. onshore and offshore development planning) that affect their communities and the things they value therein.

In other cases however participants’ questions were much more confrontational and focussed on a lack of trust in institutions and their processes: “is it the government decides what you do? You’re saying that they listen to us but I don’t think they do? They need to tell the truth” (St Andrews Participant); “sorry, why don’t you [the expert] know what the impact is going to be?” (Helmsdale Participant); “multi-national companies and the Scottish Government are benefitting – why are we not?” (Stranraer Participant); and “are local people actually listened to or just the developers?” (Islay Participant). This lack of trust could deter people from participating in decision-making, for example if there was a feeling that their opinion wouldn’t be listened to. Combined with a lack of awareness about process and how to input to decisions affecting public interests, this lack of trust could arguably result in poor linking capital and institutional resilience / capacity as well as reticence and / or animosity towards institutions.

7.3 Changes in participants’ knowledge and views about offshore renewables and the role of public engagement

It was clear from the discussions at all the Round 1 workshops that most participants had engaged deeply with the topic and many had developed their knowledge and understanding. The posters used to capture the change in participants’ responses in relation to three key questions, reflect this process. When they arrived at the start of the workshop, participants were asked to put one yellow dot on each of three posters, to indicate where they positioned themselves in relation to the question on the poster. At the end of the session they were asked to repeat the exercise using a red dot, so that any overall changes within the positions of members of the group could be identified.

A sample of the completed posters is shown below, with a discussion of how opinions appear to have changed over the course of the workshops. A Set of posters from the Round 1 locations can be found in Appendix 7.

In three workshops (Islay, Stranraer and St Andrews) there was an overall move from the opinion that renewable energy will probably ‘Have no effect on me’ towards ‘Change my life’. In Helmsdale, on the other hand, participants’ opinion changed in the opposite direction, with a greater concentration of red ‘After’ dots towards the view that renewable energies would have no effect. In Kirkwall, most participants put their dots around the middle of the scale both before and after the workshop.

While participants in Kirkwall maintained a generally positive view of the implications for them of the development of renewable energy, in the other workshops there was a clearer move towards a more positive stance over the course of the day. Across the workshops, six participants started at the ‘Very negative’ end of the scale and 23 placed themselves at the ‘Extremely positive’ end. At the end of the day there were no participants (red dots) at the ‘Very negative’ end of the scale and 46 at the ‘’Extremely positive’ end.

In Kirkwall at the start of the workshop, participants’ yellow dots were concentrated at the ‘Yes, definitely’ end of the scale, with only one sceptical about public involvement. At the end of the day, all the red dots were towards the ‘Yes, definitely’ end of the scale, but six people (red dots) had moved more towards the centre of the scale.

In Islay, Helmsdale and St Andrews, participants placed their dots at the ‘Yes, definitely’ end of the scale both at the start and the end of the workshop.

While most participants in Stranraer placed their dots near ‘Yes, definitely’ at both the start and the end of the day, about a third placed themselves towards the centre of the scale, with one person placing themselves at the ‘No, not at all’ end. At the end of the day, all the red dots were placed at the ‘Yes, definitely’ end of the scale.

In St Andrews, dots were concentrated at the ‘Yes, definitely’ end of the scale both before and after the workshop.

7.4 Focus for Round 2

Round 1 provided very useful information on values and the perceived impacts on those values from offshore renewables, and focussed on listening and recording the participants’ views and developing findings in an inductive, bottom-up way. What was important for Round 2 was to take that data and consider the implications for improving the SIA process. Three key areas came out very clearly and provided the focus for Round 2:

• Verifying the value clusters with the participants so that those clusters could form the basis of a structured approach to collecting data on values and impacts;
• Taking what participants had said about the engagement process and mapping that onto an SIA process to see specifically where improvements could be made; and
• Investigating with participants techniques that could be used to collect data on values and impacts more systematically.

Summary of findings

• The Round 1 dialogue made it possible to create clusters of values expressed by participants. There are clear relationships between the value clusters and the SIA categories developed by Vanclay et al (2002, 2015).
• The discussion of what people value with public participants generated descriptions of values that are meaningful to members of the public and decision-makers. Having a set of value clusters which we know are important to people is a useful step towards enabling the inclusion of these values within an improved SIA process.
• Participants talked about the impacts on these values of scenarios for the development of offshore renewables, showing the relationships between values and the range of impacts. The findings on impacts provide useful material on the types of issues that are likely to be raised within SIAs of offshore renewables plans and strategies.
• The resilience capacities approach outlined in the project’s analytical framework was used to analyse the values emerging from the dialogue. This provided a way of considering values in terms of the functions they facilitate or enable rather than focusing on individual or social preferences and priorities. Resilience capacities could be used at the start of an SIA to scope the situation of communities and identify vulnerabilities or potential.
• A number of participants’ questions and comments suggest that some people have a lack of trust or clarity about how public institutions work and make decisions. This is relevant, both as an issue to be explored in SIAs but also as a challenge for the SIA process itself, as a lack of trust could deter people from participating in decision-making.
• A number of findings emerging from Round 1 were taken forward for discussion at the Round 2 dialogue event.