Environmental mediation: The mediation procedure on the waste management plan in the district of Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia - Initial results of the companion social science research

For the first time ever in the Federal Republic of Germany a mediation procedure on a waste management concept has been carried out. It took place in Neuss in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The interdisciplinary project group, Environmental Mediation, from the Science Centre Berlin for Social Research (WZB) was one of the initiators of the mediation project. It conducted social science research that accompanied the procedure throughout. The procedure began in March 1992 and ended in August 1993 with a controversial compromise; in particular, it proved impossible to reach agreement on the question of whether waste incineration was objectively necessary and legally required. The results presented here should be seen as a workshop report; the final report is planned for winter 1995. This paper will provide an overview of events leading up to the mediation procedure and the course it has taken, in conjunction with the methodological approach of the parallel empirical research and the international comparative studies that are still going on. It will then report some of the central findings from our participatory observation and questionnaire survey, and examine the influence of the normal political process before, during and after the mediation procedure. The problem of success and failure as criteria for assessing the results of the mediation will be discussed. The conclusion drawn is that, although the mediation procedure in Neuss did not manage to counter the gravitational force of the normal political process, certain aspects indicating a positive conflict resolution have emerged as well as results that are not normally possible to achieve in formal (conventional) procedures.