Exploring the Implications of Different Institutional Logics on Marine Biodiversity Enhancement

Offshore wind energy parks are expanding globally, largely in response to rising demand for renewable energy. At the same time, questions are being raised about the impacts these energy parks will have on marine biodiversity. In the North Sea, the expansion of wind energy means that all seven adjacent countries impose their own ideas on the development and construction of offshore wind energy parks, including different approaches to mitigating, enhancing and/or ensuring ‘nature positive impacts’. These various biodiversity claims are increasingly being included into tendering processes for wind energy parks as a non-price criteria. The ways in which biodiversity is incorporated into these tendering processes represents different processes of inscription – that is, the incorporation of values, assumptions and priorities associated with biodiversity into technical tendering requirements and demands. For example, through mandatory nature-inclusive designs for offshore wind energy parks in the Netherlands or through stringent assessments prior to granting lease agreements (i.e. Habitats Regulations Assessment) in the United Kingdom (excluding Scotland). Using the Netherlands and the United Kingdom as country case studies, this paper aims to identify how different institutional logics shape the inscription of assumptions and priorities about biodiversity within the tendering process of offshore wind energy, and how in turn these logics affect the way that biodiversity is being monitored and accounted for. In doing so we discuss the implications of different institutional logics on governing both present and future biodiversities in the marine environment and beyond.