Abstract
Societal concerns regarding the negative impacts of wind turbines on species and ecosystems have placed more emphasis on mitigation efforts pre- and post-construction. While the mitigation hierarchy is usually fronted to deal with negative ecological impacts, it is hardly employed accordingly. This calls for the core of the problem to be addressed, namely, the lack of an appropriate framework for mitigation as a concept to properly address ecological impacts caused by wind-power development. In this chapter, mitigation is defined as the intervention(s) implemented to affect the risk of wind turbines impacting species or ecosystems. This concept is placed within a social-ecological context where the consecutive steps of the mitigation hierarchy may be affected by socio-economic, technological or environmental spheres of interest. Decisions relating to mitigation are in principle normative, which necessitates addressing three central ethical questions: (1) In which circumstances should mitigation be implemented? (2) How much mitigation is required? (3) Who is responsible for mitigation? Implementing mitigation requires decision-makers to acknowledge that trouble never comes alone, which requires balancing trade-offs and embracing uncertainty into the decision-making process. Adaptive and participatory management may be the best decision-making framework to do this, as it allows for improved ecological understanding through monitoring and a flexible approach to mitigate locally but manage regionally.