(Low-)Conflict Areas

During our visit at solar park Welzow III, one of the three tour guides from the local energy giant LEAG called the former airport runway on which it was built a low-conflict area. This means, that the redevelopment of the 16.6-hectare area was deemed “uncontroversial” among the population in the region, because it is surrounded by forest and no settlement is directly adjacent. One of the other guide adds that the company owns a total of 33.000 hectares of low-conflict areas in Lusatia available for the conversion to renewable energy infrastructures. While it seems appropriate to repurpose developed areas to meet the demand of CO2-free energy production, I wonder if it is appropriate to refer to these sites as being low-conflict.

All of the 27.000 solar modules at Welzow III were manufactured in China. They travelled a long way, and by doing so caused high CO2 emissions. In turn, China still mainly produces energy in coal-fired plants. Materials needed to produce solar cells, such as iron, ore, copper, silver, and bauxite are extracted Brazil, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, and Guinea. So, does the use of Chinese solar modules in Lusatia not reproduce these conflicts, which are said to be nonexistent?

What‘s more, solar modules have a life span of approximately 25 to 30 years. Yet, our guides were not able to tell us about their recycability. It seems that the increasing use of solar energy today defers potential conflicts around their decomposition into the future.

Closed or soon-to-be-decommissioned open-cast mines run by LEAG also count as low-conflict areas. For instance, the former open-pit mining operation Cottbus-Nord is seen as a unique opportunity to build a nature reserve and recreational area as well as a floating solar park. All of these infrastructural endeavours are said to be positive for the region, invite tourism and increase the quality of life for the residents. The municipality of Cottbus is invested in their plan “to create an innovative and climate protection-oriented urban landscape that will serve as a driving force for the whole of Cottbuser Ostsee in a balanced dialog between living, recreation, experience, research and business”.¹ Of course, this project will require partial deforestation around the lake as well as the sealing of additional areas in order to build a harbour and a bike path around the lake.

Between 1970 and 2006, lignite mining in the region required the resettlement of five villages – Groß Lieskow, Tranitz, Klein Lieskow, Lakoma and Merzdorf – with a total displaced population of 790. Does the marketing of a flooded mine as a low-conflict opportunity for a recreational area not conceal a conflict, meaning the sacrifice of communities in the recent past?

Merely scratching the surface of socio-political contentiousness in the area – that is to say, conflicts with and among humans – the term low-conflict does not even consider what counts as a a conflict from other-than-human points of view.

Mining and the burning of lignite have harmed and continue to harm the environment as open-cast mines such as Welzow-Süd will stay operative until 2038.² This entails deforestation, destruction of non-human habitat, interference with the water cycle, CO2 emissions – to name just a few consequences directly conflicting with the interests of multispecies habitants. The labeling of such ecologically devastated and exploited areas as low-conflict, I argue, distracts from the environmental impact of extraction practices on Lusatia.

LEAG might consider its properties throughout Lusatia to be uncontested, easily accessible sites of renewable energy production. However, the complex socio-material layers of these areas indicates that they are anything but low-conflict.

1. https://cottbuser-ostsee.de/, accessed March 2024 ↩︎
2. LMBV, Welzow-Süd/Jänschwalde/Cottbus-Nord, 2015, p. 13 ↩︎