How should community values about landscapes be assessed and evaluated when a major development is proposed? How do you deal with the subjectivity of values about landscape? What factors besides visual impact – such as heritage – that need to be considered? What if the development is as large in scale as a wind farm? Is it possible to arrive at a simple, consistent process when some locations are apparently ‘uncontroversial’, while others face entrenched and well-organised opposition? At what stages should the community be directly consulted?

These are some of the challenging questions answered by a national project that has just won the Planning Institute Australia (Victoria) award for environmental planning/conservation. The project, funded by the Australian Government and exposed to wide community comment over a two month national roadshow, has produced a national assessment framework for wind farms and landscape values. Unusually, the project was initiated by a partnership of the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT) and Auswind, the peak body for the wind industry (now part of the Clean Energy Council).

The framework – based around a simple, rigorous and transparent four-step process – was prepared by Melbourne-based consultants Planisphere with Context, Collaborations and others. It is already being implemented through a wind industry accreditation scheme and leading heritage professionals expect the study to become the new benchmark method for assessing landscape significance.

The project is significant because it:

- Provides a sound, logical process for resolving the most subjective and potentially fraught area of wind farm siting and design; - Is capable of delivering national consistency of standards in an area where this is badly needed; and, - Crosses the ‘last frontier’ in landscape assessment, demonstrating how landscape values can be assessed in a manner compatible with established heritage methodologies like the Burra Charter.

It is therefore likely to have application in determining landscape significance generally, both natural and cultural.

Benefits

The framework is intended to provide greater clarity and certainty about the way that communities can participate in and contribute to the process of assessing landscape values and the impact of a wind farm proposal.

It is intended to assist wind farm developers by setting out a clear sequence of steps for dealing with a subjective aspect of wind farm development. Many stakeholders will benefit from a more consistent approach to landscape assessment Australia-wide.

Approach

The framework has been designed to:

- Integrate with typical siting, design and development processes followed by wind farm developers. - Take account of the need to integrate with other investigations and assessment, such as heritage, noise or environmental issues (assessment of impacts on landscape values is only one of a number of assessments undertaken by wind farm developers). - Allow its application to simple as well as complex situations – where landscape values are relatively high and community interest is strong, a decision to proceed beyond Step 1A may require extensive investigations to fulfil the requirements of many tasks within the Framework. On the other hand, where landscape values are indisputably low and there is little or no public interest then many of the tasks may be able to be satisfactorily fulfilled with less investigative effort. - Provide improved processes of engagement, communication and consultation with local and wider communities in relation to landscape values assessment, including Indigenous communities.

It is a framework, rather than a set of detailed prescribed methods, tools or techniques. This allows for methods to continue to evolve and adapt, as is inevitable when professional consultants compete by constantly improving techniques, and regulatory panels and authorities in different jurisdictions around Australia interrogate and test ‘best practice’.

Consultation

The Framework is founded on a study of best practice from across Australia and overseas, much of which is summarised in a companion Foundation Report. It has been overseen by a steering committee and an expert advisory panel of leading national practitioners and academics. It was also exposed to wide community comment over a two month ‘national roadshow’, including face-to-face round tables and open forums in sixteen locations around Australia, including every State capital and eleven regional locations around the country. Government departments and agencies, peak bodies and community groups have reviewed it and suggested improvements.

The Framework has been developed to provide a best practice tool for understanding values and impacts that is consistent with Commonwealth, State and local government regulatory and approvals processes. It is intended to guide input to existing regulatory contexts without adding an additional assessment process.

An important finding of this study is that community values about a landscape affected by a wind farm proposal must be explicitly examined and considered. Direct community input is either ‘recommended’ or ‘essential’ in each step.

Structure of the Framework

The National Assessment Framework has four steps, the first of which is split into Steps 1A and 1B. These steps are as follows:

Step 1: Assess the Landscape Values

1A: Preliminary Landscape Assessment

1B: Full Landscape Assessment

Step 2: Describe and Model the Wind Farm in the Landscape

Step 3: Assess the Impacts of the Wind Farm on Landscape Values

Step 4: Respond to Impacts

Step 1A is intended to contribute to the proponent’s pre-feasibility assessment. Steps 1B to 4 represent a process of detailed investigation that would form part of the proponent’s formal application for regulatory approval (albeit in some cases the detail of matters such as close-to-viewer mitigation measures may be resolved as a condition of approval, rather than pre-approval).

Content

Each Step is set out in the following sections:

- Purpose - Objectives - Tasks - Useful references - Required outputs - Reporting to stakeholders - Questions to consider - Practice Notes

The imperative to act in response to climate change and global warming is growing ever more urgent. Sustainable energy developments like wind farms can have a significant impact on landscapes valued highly by communities. It is timely therefore for this project to have produced a process for assessing and responding to these impacts that is supported both by the wind industry and by those interested in conserving landscapes.