Landscape and Conflict—Some Basic Considerations

Landscape conflicts have intensified in recent years—especially in the context of the expansion of facilities for the generation and management of renewable energy. They gain a particular complexity through the ambiguity of the object ‘landscape’, which is constructed very differently in different linguistic and social contexts—usually with very different normative charges. This ambiguity and different normative charges make it difficult to regulate landscape conflicts, especially when moral devaluations of the other conflict party arise from them. In addition, the state or parts of it appear as a conflict party, so that it cannot function as an independent third instance or can do so only to a limited extent. Accordingly, landscape conflicts are often transformed from factual and procedural conflicts into identity and value conflicts, which are more difficult to regulate.