Keeping the forest above to phase out the coal below: The discursive politics and contested meaning of the Hambach Forest. (July 2022) - Liersch, Carina
Abstract: The exit from socio-technical regimes enjoys increasing scientific interest. While many studies which cover energy or sustainability transitions focus on system contexts, there is still a lack of research focusing on the locations and arenas of negotiation. The Hambach Forest in Germany is one such opportunity to investigate the discontinuation of coal energy production. Reconnecting the global with the local sides of policy issues, we focus on the local policy arena in the context of the national coal phase out. The question is how the coal discontinuation is negotiated in the context of the Hambach Forest conflict and how actors engage in framing interaction over the course of the conflict, and how the competing framings changed over time. With an analysis of the controversy in the social and mass media about lignite mining in a very specific location, we were able to identify framings along which two groupings clashed in a physical and discursive struggle in 2018–2019, the 'Climate and Landscape Protectors' and the 'Protectors of Public and Economic Order'. We found the framing categories of 'responsibility', 'cost-lose-gain nexus', and 'dependencies' and identified their fluctuation during the period of analysis. Energy transition and environmental protection clash with energy production incumbency, primacy of economy or ecology, and law and order. The Hambach Forest conflict has become a representative struggle about the speed of the coal exit pathway in Germany. Highlights: This study explores the Hambach Forest as a local site of policy making embedded in an overarching national and global energy transition scheme. With the use of a framing analysis, two opposing actor coalitions were identified in the controversy which remained stable throughout the conflict and in which regime actors aligned with state actors. The actor coalitions situate the conflict on a different temporal scale and attach different meanings for the national coal discontinuation to it. Nevertheless, they function as temporal "positional communities" that not only share frames, but also common political "enemies". The framing conflict circulates around who is (not) cared for, who is to be held responsible, what potential costs-losses-gains are expected and what conditions for an implementation of a coal discontinuation should be. While the climate and landscape protectors, who highlight their responsibility for others, enact climate protection as the primary logic of operation that includes a story of who is to blame, the protectors of public and economic order, highlight their responsibility for others by stressing the costs for workers, shareholders and the region, they adopt a logic of socio-economic consequences.