Constructing a 'landscape justice' for windfarm development: The case of Nant Y Moch, Wales

Centring on landscape, considerable social tension persists around siting windfarms in Wales. While the policy of both Wales and UK governments commits them to cutting carbon emissions to mitigate climate change and so to increasing the percentage of electricity derived from renewable energy sources, political support for windfarms vacillates and there is vociferous public opposition. Taking landscape as our organising concept, we analyse the 62 turbine, approximately 155 Megawatt Nant y Moch proposal in Ceredigion. We ask how landscape is represented in pro and anti-windfarm discourses and how reconsideration of landscape might lead to alternative constructions of justice. We thus develop a notion of 'landscape justice' which blends elements of deontological, virtue and consequentialist ethics, and argue for: (i) a deeper appreciation of the exclusion of 'other' voices in deciding outcomes; (ii) a heightened awareness that how public space is created and how arguments are made, received and facilitated therein is critically important to just outcomes; (iii) a renewed interest in how landscape, wind and energy ought to be valued; (iv) an understanding that, although justice with respect to landscape may be irresolvable across space and time, that arguments may be incommensurable, this pluralistic limit can be celebrated.