Going to the Co-op takes twice as long – but you just might see astork

An experiment in democratic management of the environment

By John Hille, the Ideas Bank Foundation

Over the past four years, the Halkær Valley in Nothern Jutland has seen a remarkableprocess of social and ecological change. This process is described in a forthcoming book byKurt Aagaard Nielsen and Birger Steen Nielsen:

“En mennenskelig natur – Aktionsforskning for bæredygtighed og politisk kultur”

(A Human Nature – Action Research for Sustainabilityand Political Culture). The present article is based on the draft of this book as well aspresentations held by its authors at a seminar arranged by the Ideas Bank in the autumn of 2005.In Norway, measures to protect the environment – ranging from the establishment of nationalparks to bans on new building close to the shoreline or on driving noisy snow scooters in themountains – have often met with resistance from local communities. This has made parts of the environmental movement sceptical of local democracy and devolution of power, whileother sections of the population have a rub against central government for not respecting thewishes of their communities.Such conflicts are not uncommon in Denmark either. When central or regional authoritieshave wished to establish nature reserves or “regenerate” nature on existing agricultural land,they have often met local resistance. Country folks tend to be especially sceptical when theyare presented with plans that have been more or less “sewn up” by central authorities andtheir expert advisers – and the fact that such plans may be strongly applauded by greengroups based in the cities, does little to help.Is it possible to achieve sustainable management of the environment in a way that doesn’tlimit the scope of local democracy, but strengthens it instead? That’s what they’ve tried in theHalkær Valley. The results so far are encouraging.

Environmental problems in the Halkær Valley

The Halkær Valley borders the Halkær Stream, which flows into Halkær Bredning (bay), apart of the larger Nibe Bredning, in its turn a part of the Limfjord that divides the northernmostpart of Jutland in two. The area lies about 25 km west of the city of Aalborg. As defined here,it is about 20 km2 in extent and has some 1000 inhabitants, who live either in one of the four hamlets of Vegger, Ejdrup, Skørbæk and Halkær, or on individual homesteads.The valley faces serious environmental challenges. Halkær Bay is virtually dead, as fish,eelgrass and other organisms have been killed off by the nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff ledthere by the Halkær Stream and the smaller Skørbæk Stream. The Halkær Stream oncemeandered through a series of wetlands, but in the early 20th century the stream wasstraightened and the wetlands drained to provide more land for farming. This not onlydestroyed the biodiversity that was associated with the wetland habitat, but also exacerbatedpollution, as there was no longer anything to trap the excess nutrients before they flowed intoHalkær Bay.In the mid-1990s the regional council of North Jutland designated the valley as an area of special interest for nature regeneration. A number of measures were subsequently carriedout. They included returning sections of the Halkær Stream to its old meandering course,depositing gravel in the stream bed to allow fish to spawn, and reducing emissions of phosphorous (but not of nitrogen, which was causing the problems downstream in the bay).

The Ideas Bank Foundation, John Hillewww.idebanken.no

However, some of the regional authorities’ projects were unpopular with the local community,and some had to shelved because it proved impossible to establish a constructive dialogue.

Action research – an impulse from outside

In 2001 the Danish Nature Council, as part of a programme whose aim was to “illuminatecitizens’ attitudes to nature”, made a small grant for an action research project. Therecipients were Kurt Aagaard Nielsen and Birger Steen Nielsen of Roskilde University, whointended to carry out their project in two localities – Hillerød north of Copenhagen and theHalkær Valley. In the nature of action research, this project aimed at more than simply“illuminating” people’s attitudes. As Nielsen and Nielsen (no relations – Nielsen is a verycommon name in Denmark) write:“Together with the inhabitants of the Halkær Valley, where we did most of our work, weturned the question of “attitudes to nature” into one of future environmental and societaldevelopment. The citizens’ own ideas on how to manage the environment in a democraticway would be central, but the point of departure would be the full context of their lives – notenvironmental management as an area of undifferentiated professional expertise.”In short, it was a matter of starting a dialogue on the future of the valley, in which theenvironment would be an important issue but not an isolated sectoral one.The conditions for starting a successful dialogue were unpromising in some respects, thoughmore promising in others. The Halkær Valley as a whole was not a particularly close-knitcommunity. Administratively, it was divided between three municipalities, whose “bits” of thevalley were at the very periphery of each of the three. There was little local employment andfew local services. Apart from the few full-time farmers, most of the population commuted tothe surrounding towns for work. Services were largely limited to a Co-op store in Vegger andan independent school in Ejdrup. There was little daily contact between the four hamlets. Onthe other hand, there was a local CSO, the “Halkær Valley Citizens’ Association”, whichaimed to create an “ecological experimental zone” in the valley. This was a small group of people who did not represent the population at large, but who had had some success inmaking the Halkær Kro (pub) into a venue for cultural events, complete with organic food.There were also fairly strong community associations in each of the villages of Vegger,Ejdrup and Skørbæk.

Planning upside-down

The design of the action research project included several stages, centering on a futureworkshop for citizens of the valley, to be followed by a “research workshop”, at which citizenswould meet outside experts and representatives of local and regional government. AlthoughNielsen and Nielsen had first come into contact with the Halkær Valley Citizens’ Association,they did not ask it to issue invitations to the future workshop. Instead, they contacted thethree community associations in Vegger, Ejdrup and Skørbæk, which all showed positiveinterest in the project and invited people to take part in the workshop. This was important, asthey enjoyed the confidence of people in their respective hamlets, whereas attitudes to theCitizen’s Association were more mixed. For the same reason, the workshop took place in theschool in Ejdrup rather than the pub in Halkær, which had better facilities but was associatedwith the “greenies”.Some 30 people attended the future workshop, held on a Saturday in January 2002. A futureworkshop always includes three phases: criticism, utopian visioning and implementation. Thevisioning phase of this workshop produced a lot of ideas for environmental and socialimprovements in the valley. During the implementation phase, working groups wereestablished to develop these ideas into six “prospects of the future”, which ranged fromestablishing a Development Fund for the valley via new housing developments to attract

The Ideas Bank Foundation, John Hillewww.idebanken.no

people interested in semi-communal living, to improving conditions for canoeing on andwalking or cycling along the Halkær Stream.The research workshop took place in two stages, one lasting a day and a half in April, theother one day in May. The April workshop was attended by 15 of the citizens who had takenpart in the future workshop, plus an equal number of outsiders – scientists andrepresentatives of the authorities. All the six working groups were represented, andpresented the prospects on which they had worked over the past three months. One of theproposals to come out of this work – ultimately drawing on the ideas generated at the futureworkshop – was now presented under the heading of “Give the valley back to Nature”. Therole of the outsiders at the research workshop was to comment on, and if necessary criticize,the working groups’ proposals on the basis of their knowledge as experts. In other words, theplanning process was being turned upside-down: instead of citizens’ being invited at a latestage to comment on proposals presented by experts, the reverse was taking place.By splitting the research workshop into two stages several weeks apart, it was possible toinvite fresh experts to attend the second meeting – people better able to answer difficultquestions that had been posed at the first. Also, the working groups could use the interveningweeks to improve their proposals in the light of criticism and suggestions received at the Aprilmeeting. The May meeting focused mainly on questions of how conflicts (or potentialconflicts) that work so far had thrown up might be resolved. One of the new invitees was anexpert on property transactions from the Regional Council. Through his participation, thegroup that had proposed to give the valley – or more precisely parts of it – back to Naturediscovered new ways in which the farmers who would be affected might be compensatedthrough land swaps. This was in spite of the fact that the Regional Council itself had notalways been successful when it had proposed land swaps in order to carry out its own natureregeneration projects. Another potentially contentious issue was who ought to coordinatefurther development and implementation of the various proposals. On the one hand therewas the Citizens’ Association, which might have regarded itself as the obvious candidate –on the other hand, it was not truly representative of the citizens. An interim solution wasfound in a joint committee consisting of the Board of the Citizens’ Association plusrepresentatives of each of the community associations in the hamlets. This solution wasmade easier by the fact that most of the people who would sit on the joint committee had gotto know each other better through the workshops and working groups.

The snowball starts rolling

The action research project as such was concluded with a “market day” in September 2002,in which between 100 and 150 people participated. The working groups exhibited their proposals at the school in Ejdrup. On the same day, “Vegger Harbour” – a canoe jettysymbolizing the vision of a more accessible Halkær Stream – was formally opened, andthere were various lectures and sports events. The day was finished off with a politicalmeeting attended by prominent representatives of the Regional Council as well as two of themunicipalities between which the valley is divided. On the following day the Aalborgnewspaper,

Nordjyllands Stiftstidende

, wrote:““To be honest, when I first heard of this project I thought it must be something cooked up bylonghaired people who hadn’t moved with the times since 1968”, said Niels ChristianKirketerp <the deputy leader of the Regional Council, who had been present at the marketday – JH>. But his scepticism has since turned into something approaching respect.”The other politicians present also praised the citizens’ initiatives, though they issued fewer firm promises of support than some were wishing for.The market day was anything but a conclusion to local activity in the valley. It was rather asign that a snowball had started rolling, which would lead to significant results over thecoming three years.