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The rapid expansion of wind farms in Germany has spurred debate over the environmental impacts of the Energiewende, the country's plan to transition towards renewable energy sources. We explore the opposition to two wind farms in central Germany by local civil initiatives through the Foucauldian notion of counter-conducts and a related Analytics of Protest Framework. Employing qualitative interpretive research methods, including 27 semi-structured interviews, we examine how wind energy critics navigate practices and rationalities governing wind energy expansion in the context of the Energiewende. We argue that critics challenge imperatives of environmental protection and energy justice, while at the same time reinforcing them. Struggles over wind energy manifest as struggles over the legitimate object of environmental protection and the ethical constitution of an environmental subject. Landscapes, both as habitats and scenery, gain impetus as the central tenet in the ecological agenda of wind energy opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-world laboratories (RwLs) promise to advance, and at the same time study, transitions to sustainability in a specific sociospatial context. That brings challenges for researchers working in RwLs. In this Design Report, we reflect on the experiences researchers have gained in the RwL Knowledge Dialogue Northern Black Forest, Germany. We propose the concept of "design junctions" as deliberate intervention points in the procedural setup of RwLs that are, however, still contingent on the normative and methodological expectations of this special type of research. We present five design junctions tied to the questions of how to position an RwL in a politicized environment, deploy an interdisciplinary research team, develop the research program in a participatory way, incentivize transdisciplinarity, and engage with stakeholders and citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we introduce an empirical case study of the German forest policy subsystem in order to understand how the concept of sustainable forest management has been discursively constructed, challenged, and changed over time. As a theoretical basis, we use an idea-based coalition approach, drawing on both the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Hajer's Argumentative Discourse Analysis. We show that rival coalitions that share a certain idea of forest management have dominated German forest policy for decades by employing different rhetorical and institutional strategies in order to incorporate their ideas into public policy institutions. Analyzing how the issue of climate change is discursively ‘digested’ by the actor coalitions, we find that climate change has been incorporated into the political argumentation of both coalitions in a manner consistent with their existing main policy ideas. Moreover, the membership of the coalitions has remained stable. These findings allow for conclusions regarding both our theoretical approaches and the policy subsystem's ability to adapt forests to cope with climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]