Disentangling the Green vs. Green Dilemma to Inform Sustainable Destination Development : The Interplay between Onshore Wind Power Development and Biodiversity Conservation

Sustainable Destination Development implies reaching the 17 SDGs at a destination level. Climate crisis is arguably the primary challenge faced by destinations today. It is now commonly accepted that the crisis is primarily caused due to the burning of fossil fuels while converting it into energy. Therefore, decarbonization of the energy sector appears to be a viable way to eliminate the crisis. This ensued the installation of unprecedented amounts of renewable energy facilities in the last two decades, especially in Europe. As such onshore wind power is at the forefront of this trend and is projected to be the primary renewable source of electricity in Europe in foreseeable future. However, substituting fossil fuels by the renewable energy sources such as onshore wind power requires vast land areas, and as argued by many, may undermine biodiversity conservation – an equally urgent matter to be addressed by destinations. This is because land-use change is identified as the foremost cause of the biodiversity loss globally. Thus, this study was aimed to elucidate the ‘green-green paradox’ (i.e., jeopardizing biodiversity while combating climate crisis) using a qualitative research methodology. The main research questions were intended to reveal current best practices of dealing with the challenge, identify main barriers, and suggest solutions for a better practice in the future. Data was collected through semi-structured expert interviews, and the results were reported using thematic analysis. The study found that the current best practise of addressing the biodiversity challenge is via the Mitigation Hierarchy framework – a regulatory tool intended at safeguarding biodiversity while developing infrastructure projects. Simultaneously, the weak implementation of the hierarchy in practice was identified as the primary barrier for harmonious wind power – biodiversity relationship. The huge knowledge gap in understanding the depth of impacts, lack of uniform methodologies to measure and account for them, and the lack of collaboration and communication between stakeholders were identified as the main factors that impede operationalization of the framework. A need for more stricter and better implemented regulations was an important emergent theme throughout the results that was deemed to potentially be the defining factor in addressing the mentioned impediments.