KNOWING Stakeholder Challenge Workshop South Westphalia

Summary  

The SWF demonstrator challenge workshop brought together key stakeholders to discuss measures and initiatives for climate adaptation and mitigation, prioritize them and identify response risks. The focus was still on the Arnsberg Forest area, but an expansion to include the Soester Boerde arable farming zone was discussed and corresponding measures and initiatives had already been presented. 

Already in the 1st workshop on August 23, a basic understanding was developed that the water regime in the Arnsberg Forest for the storage of drinking water upstream of Lake Möhne and for the retention of precipitation to protect against flooding must be given very high priority. The planned construction of dozens of wind turbines in this area will put the water regime under stress and damage the forest ecosystem, especially the forest soil. This represents a response risk defined by KNOWING, according to which a climate change mitigation measure, the construction of plants for CO2-free energy production, can damage the regional climate and ecosystem. The findings from the 1st workshop were that preventive and compensatory measures on the wind farm site alone are not sufficient to compensate for the damage and to mitigate response risks to the adjacent forest. Instead, the Arnsberg Forest as a whole habitat must be considered as a minimum focus area. At that time, the "Sponge Forest" project to close thousands of kilometers of historic drainage ditches in the Arnsberg Forest was presented and discussed. 

In the 2nd workshop, further stakeholders were specifically invited to discuss these findings, including the Arnsberg Forest Nature Park Association, the Ruhrverband, wind project developers and large forest owners. In the discussion of individual main measures and interventions, as they had already been queried online in advance, a consensus emerged that the protection of the regional climate must be defined above all in the triad of water regime - CO2 storage - climate protection, on the assumption that restoration of a natural water regime will promote soil fertility, humus build up and carbon sequestration for reducing atmospheric CO2. All participants agreed that the expansion of wind energy and area PV is necessary and that climate risks can be mitigated with suitable measures. Further research is now to be carried out into whether the current water protection criteria for the construction of wind turbines are sufficient to do justice to this newly defined high value of the water regime. 

The stakeholders found the workshop and the KNOWING project very interesting overall and confirmed their interest in further cooperation. 

Informative Steps

Prior to the workshop, the participants had received extensive information material on the geological, pedological and hydrological conditions of the region and on the critical effects of wind turbine construction activities on the health of forest soils (soil compaction, hydrological, chemical and biological effects). To kick off the workshop, Adrian Mork and Stefan Slembrouck once again introduced the KNOWING task and objectives. One focus was on the presentation of the meteorological effects of different temperature scenarios in the SWF region, which was preceded by a brief explanation of the development of the IPCC climate models. This was followed by a lively discussion of further concrete measures and interventions based on the results of the online survey, in which all but one of the stakeholders present took part. Specifically, the need was defined to investigate whether the existing water protection criteria, which must be taken into account when erecting wind turbines, comprehensively consider the retention of as much precipitation water as possible or only address selective measures such as the protection of springs and watercourses. The group found the idea of integrated modeling of water, CO2 emissions and climate effects for the region interesting, even if there was great skepticism as to whether modeling the water regime is fundamentally possible. Due to a lack of time, it was not possible to classify the risks discussed as high, medium or low. The classification was carried out ex-post by the SWF KNOWNING team, which had already exchanged information with the stakeholders in several bilateral meetings prior to the workshop. 

The discussion revealed that not all stakeholders were aware of relevant projects from other stakeholders, and spontaneous collaborations and cooperation were offered.

See further information: 231130_Regional Challenge WS Reporting_SWF_V0.9_ohne Fotos.docx