ECosystem-based Adaptive MAnagement for REnewable energy in a sustainable North Sea (ECOAMARE)

Overview ECOAMARE

The ECOAMARE project (ECosystem-based Adaptive MAnagement for REnewable energy in a sustainable North Sea) is an NWA funded consortium, consisting of NIOZ, Groningen University, Utrecht University, Wageningen University, VU Athena, TNO, Deltares and Stichting De Noordzee. It aims to contribute to strategic, interdisciplinary and inclusive decision-making for the large-scale expansion of offshore wind energy in the North Sea.

As part of ECOAMARE, my PhD research examines the conditions under which knowledge integration can support inclusive decision-making in the expansion of offshore wind energy. Focusing on Nature-Inclusive Design offshore wind energy farms (NiD OWF), I analyze which knowledge practices are involved and how they shape what becomes valued as ‘nature’ and for whom.

Nature-inclusive Design Offshore Wind Farms (NiD OWF) in the Dutch North Sea have become a central focus in Dutch energy and nature governance, promising to provide both renewable energy and benefit the local ecology through nature-enhancing design of the farm. Current North Sea governance operationalizes this by adopting an integrative multi-stakeholder approach. While such integration is increasingly considered a condition for a nature/energy transition that is both effective and just, it is also as an inherently political process, involving decisions on whose voices and what knowledge is relevant (and not). Transformative change requires making such politics explicit. This research uses both case study, literature review, and (archival) document analysis methodologies to investigate what knowledge counts in deciding what nature is to be included, and how that impacts what nature-inclusive comes to mean and be in various dimensions of current and future decision-making on NiD OWF.