Oplossen van milieuconflicten door buurtdialoog

The focus of the project was on developing a toolkit for authorities and companies on how to establish a neighbourhood dialogue. The toolkit contains detailed information on when, why and how to use neighbourhood dialogues. It answers key questions, e.g. about areas of application or core principles, and supports the reader with six steps how to establish a neighbourhood dialogue. It outlines opportunities and gives support in convincing all dialogue partners – while also, however, it is also explaining risks, boundaries and how to overcome difficulties. It also indicates when it is better not to use dialogue and rely on traditional instruments to regulate a site, e.g. to prevent significant health and environmental risks.

The main objective of phase III was to develop a guideline for authorities and companies on how to evaluate their neighbourhood dialogues and to estimate the workload.

The focus of this last phase of the project was to promote the use of neighbourhood dialogues as an instrument for the solution of environmental conflicts by developing concise step-by-step instructions based on the “Toolkit” and the “Self-Evaluation Guidelines” and testing them on live cases. The main outcome of the project is the PowerPoint presentation “Neighbourhood dialogue an instrument to prevent and solve conflicts between companies and their neighbours – procedures – steps – evaluation”.

This document is aimed at authorities and companies who want to use or promote a direct dialogue approach to solving environmental conflicts between residents and industrial sites. A number of Member States have been involved in a series of projects on establishing neighbourhood dialogues, which collected and evaluated examples of how environmental conflicts between companies and their neighbourhoods could be solved by dialogue.