Céline Parotte

Siting Controversies Analysis: Framework and Method for Questioning the Procedure

Siting controversies are commonplace, as well against the construction of roads, railways, nuclear waste disposals, as against windfarms. Local citizens resist against siting decisions taken by the authorities, following a dynamics often quoted as ‘Not In My Back Yard’. Yet contested for its lack of analytical value, NIMBY is still used strategically by actors to qualify citizens as irrational and egoistic. Beyond this labeling, many factors are investigated to understand the dynamics behind siting controversies. In this paper, we focus on the impact of the legal procedure structuring the implantation of windfarms in the Walloon Region (Belgium), and its translations within different decision-making processes in specific case studies. To that regard, we consider the legal procedure as a ‘public policy instrument’. It is neither neutral nor natural, and carry values and interests. It organizes interpersonal relations between actors, and is potentially catalyzer of frustrations. In addition, this legal procedure is the object of translations within different contexts, including different actors participating to specific decision-making processes. The empirical approach of this paper is based on case studies data and on the use of an innovative methodology called ‘Open Process Workshop’. This methodology consists of a structured workshop with key stakeholders, during which the legal procedure is questioned. Overall, we demonstrate that the focus on the legal procedure – and its translations within different decision-making processes – allows systemic analysis providing deep understandings of controversies and reaffirming the interlinks between ‘the social’ and ‘the technical’ in such controversies. In addition, we argue that the methodology used fosters the production of innovative knowledge, mutual understanding, and collective learning between the participants.

Taming uncertainty: towards a new governance approach for nuclear waste management in Belgium

We focus on the new governance practices in Belgian nuclear waste management (NWM) from its ‘participatory turn’ in the late 1990s. Rather than praising (or rejecting) participation versus expert analysis, we make use of a theoretical and analytical framework in which the relevant dynamics for the analysis are ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’ technological appraisals and commitments. Even though NWM agencies often plead for an integrative approach between expert analysis and stakeholder participation, in practice both exercises are often kept separate. We address this separation and its consequences and we find that societal concerns remain subsumed in the technical options that have long been favoured by the Belgian agency. This article encourages scholars, waste managers, and decision-makers to scrutinise the moments and situations in which opening up would be desirable, and when, by contrast, it would be better to close down options in NWM.

Social Scientist On Board In Long-Term Management Of High Level And/Or Long-Lived Radioactive Waste In Belgium

In Belgium, the long-term management of radioactive waste is under the exclusive competence of the Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials (knew as ONDRAF/NIRAS). Unlike low-level waste, no institutional policy has yet been formally approved for the long-term management of high level and/or long-lived radioactive waste (knew as B&C waste). In this context, ONDRAF/NIRAS considers the public and stakeholders’ participation as an essential factor in the formulation of an effective and legitimate policy. This is why it has decided to integrate them in different ways during the elaboration of the Waste Plan (ONDRAF/NIRAS-document containing guidelines to make a principled policy decision about nuclear waste management). To do so, social scientists have been regularly mobilized either as external evaluators, follow-up committee members, or participatory observants. Hence, the Waste Plan is only the first step in a long decision-making process. For a PhD student under contract with ONDRAF/NIRAS, this mandate consists of thinking out a way to construct an inter-organizational innovative communication system that would be participative, transparent and embedded in a long- term perspective, thus integrating all the further legal steps to take throughout the decision-making process. In this regard, two paradoxical constraints must be taken into account: on the one hand, my own influence on the legal decision-making process should remain limited, because of a series of constraints, lock-ins and previous decisions which have to be respected; on the other hand, ONDRAF/NIRAS expects the research conclusions to be policy relevant and useful. In this paper, the purpose is twofold. Firstly, the issues raised by this policy mandate is an opportunity to question the performative dimensions of the social scientist in the decision- making process and, more specifically, to have a reflexive view on our position as PhD Student. Secondly, assuming the role of “embarked” social scientist, numerous of answers will discuss to face the different dilemmas of the researcher “in action”. Those reflections follow on, among others, those from previous papers discussed in Quimper in April 2013 [1] and in Leuven in June 2013 [2].