Abstract
Climate change impacts such as shrinking glaciers and decreasing snow cover are expected to cause changes in the water balance throughout the 21st century. New proglacial lakes in recently deglaciated areas could be used for mitigation measures such as hydropower production and adaptation measures to temporarily retain water and transfer it seasonally to compensate for seasonal water scarcity. Such multi-purpose reservoirs could counterbalance the water currently provided by glaciers and the seasonal snowpack. However, new dam projects often face various conflicts due to their impact on nature, biodiversity, and the landscape. This article presents the determinants for social acceptance of the first reservoir in a recently deglaciated landscape in the Swiss Alps. Three main determinants were identified: (1) the forthcoming popular vote on the national Swiss Energy Strategy 2050; (2) the participatory process, which contains a polycentric design; and (3) the project area, which does not yet have protected status. The three determinants facilitate social acceptance of the dam project, but lead to less attention on using the stored water for multiple services. These findings have implications on sustainable development, because dams in recently deglaciated areas support the transition to renewable energy sources, but transform a natural resource system into a hydroelectric landscape.
Highlights
Climate change has impacts on the alpine cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere [1,2,3]
The results demonstrate that the three dimensions of socio-political acceptance, market acceptance, societal and community acceptance, and the dynamics among them were important in the stage of the participatory process
The present study demonstrates that current political processes such as voting on the new Swiss Energy Strategy 2050 and past experiences with other dam projects in the same region influenced social acceptance of the project
Summary
Climate change has impacts on the alpine cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere [1,2,3]. New dam projects often face various conflicts due to their impact on nature, biodiversity, and the landscape [8,9] These conflicts will intensify in the future because most of the potential sites for dams are already built up, and it is necessary to penetrate into areas that deserve protection, such as recently deglaciated high mountain areas [10,11]. This paper demonstrates the determinants of social acceptance of a dam project in a European landscape that deserves protection To this end, a case study research design of the first dam project using a proglacial lake in a recently deglaciated high-mountain area in the Swiss Alps was used. This area is in front of the retreating Trift glacier, canton of Bern, Switzerland
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