Chapter 5 – Rich Case Description
5.2. Insights from the materials
5.2.1. Statements
5.2.1.1. Characteristics of the materials
At the beginning of the process, RT Members were requested to produce a written statement specifying one’s own position on the salinity issue and one’s expectations towards the process. The RT Members approached the task rather differently, either
handing in documents drafted within their organisations, drafting documents on a personal basis or a mixture of both approaches.
According to the RT’s statute, they all participate on a personal basis (§4(3) Codex of Operations, see Process Design in 4.1.3.2.). It is therefore somehow puzzling that official documents were handed in. What we can however read from this
circumstance is that the respective official document possibly represents the term of reference for the individual Member approaching the discussions at the RT. We can read it as a choice of letting aside personal judgements and explicitly refer to the state of things from the perspective of the home organisation.
Not all Members handed in a statement. Reason for this is that some Members were nominated slightly later in the process and thus skipped this first exercise, while other produced a statement in the form of an opening speech on the first Meeting, thus part of the minutes analysis. Also, some submitted electronic text documents, while other apparently faxed or scanned their statements. Time constraints didn’t allow us to re-type all non-text submissions, so we chose to do so only for those Members that we also interviewed.
Eventually, we gathered a bundle of 17 individual statements, ranging from about a hundred words to almost 1.500. Each of them was coded in an iterative process, distilling the topics addressed by the interviews. The list of topics thus produced can be seen on Table 5.3, together with relative and absolute frequencies (N=17)30 and frequency thresholds on the percentile distribution31.
30 By Frequency we generally mean the number of times a certain topic appears. In this table, the European Water Framework Directive (topic ‘EuWFD’) appears in 13 statements out of 17, yielding a relative frequency of f=13/17=0,76. This means that 76% of all initial written statements mention this topic. We chose to provide the absolute frequency (13) as well in order to remind the reader that we deal sometimes with very little numbers. Simply reporting the relative frequency would leave this detail out of sight.
31 Given the very high number of topics, it is often necessary to limit the analysis to the top results. Choosing however the three, five or ten topics with the highest frequencies would lead to a treatment of the results which is biased towards shorter lists: for example, analysing the top 5 topics of a list of 10 topics would mean to address half of the list, while doing the same for a list of 20 topics would mean to address only a quarter of it.
We therefore subdivided the every table using frequency thresholds, obtained as the 90th and the 75th percentile of frequency sets thereby provided. This allowed us to homogeneously yield the top 10% and top 25% most mentioned topics of every specific list. It is normative to settle for the top 10% or 25% of all topics. This is unavoidable. What is however important is that this applies homogeneously across all tables presented.
No. Topic Frequency Freq. Thresholds
1 EuWFD 0,76 (13)
2 Salinity thresholds 0,76 (13)
3 Watershed quality 0,65 (11)
4 Balance economy/ecology 0,59 (10) >90-Percentile (0,53) 5 Groundwater & injection practice 0,53 (9)
6 Transparency 0,53 (9)
7 Jobs 0,41 (7)
8 Production/waste ratio 0,41 (7) >75-Percentile (0,35)
9 Emissions 0,35 (6)
10 Future generations 0,35 (6)
11 Salt heaps 0,35 (6)
12 Time pressure 0,35 (6)
13 Costs 0,29 (5)
14 Drinking water provision 0,29 (5) 15 100 years of salt extraction 0,24 (4) 16 German reunification 0,24 (4)
17 Objectivity 0,24 (4)
18 Other disturbances 0,24 (4)
19 Pipeline (Neuhof-Werra) 0,24 (4)
20 Regional Economy 0,24 (4)
21 Werra degradation 0,24 (4)
22 Environmentally friendly disposal 0,18 (3)
23 Fish population 0,18 (3)
24 Other measures 0,18 (3)
25 Pipeline (North Sea) 0,18 (3) 26 Production processes 0,18 (3) 27 Production side effects 0,18 (3)
28 Tourism 0,18 (3)
29 2020 deadline 0,12 (2)
30 Feasibility 0,12 (2)
31 Participation 0,12 (2)
32 Water law vs. mining law 0,12 (2)
33 Competitiveness 0,06 (1)
34 Debate on Werra salinity 0,06 (1)
35 Diffuse pollution 0,06 (1)
36 Effects on the North Sea 0,06 (1)
37 Environment 0,06 (1)
38 Investments since 2000 0,06 (1)
39 Profits 0,06 (1)
40 Taxes 0,06 (1)
41 Wastewater Re-Extraction 0,06 (1)
42 Water Hardness 0,06 (1)
43 Worldwide food production 0,06 (1)
44 Worldwide R&D 0,06 (1)
Table 5.3 – Topics mentioned in the initial statements.
Absolute frequencies in parentheses (N=17). See footnotes 30 and 31 for methodological explanations.
Jobs
Env.-Friendly Disposal
Balance Economy/Ecology Water Law vs. Mining Law
Participation Diffuse Pollution
Emissions Salt Heaps
Fish Population Salinity Thresholds Watershed Quality German Reunification
Investments since 2000
Profits
Groundwater
Water Hardness Pipeline (North Sea)
Costs Feasibility
Production Side Effects Pipeline (Neuhof-Werra)
Production Processes Regional Economy K+S Worldwide R&D Wastewater Re-extraction
Objectivity Ta
Technologies/Measures
Production/Waste Ratio Tourism
Transparency
EuWFD Drinking Water Provision
Environment Injection Practice Other Disturbances Other Measures
Worldwide Product
Werra Degradation
Competitiveness Time Pre2020 Deadline
Future Generations100 Y of Sa Extra Effects on the North Sea
Debate on Werra Salinity
Round Table Figure 5.2 – Topics mentioned in the statements and corresponding relatio
From the statements we derive clues concerning both the understandings the RT Members have of these topics and how these topics connect to one another in the accounts they provide. Figure 5.2. constitutes a graphical representation of the network of relationships thus emerging. In the figure, the solid lines represent explicitly mentioned relationships, while the dotted lines represent those (basic) relationship that can safely be assumed as understood or self-evident.
The core insight we gain from projecting the system emerging from the statements is that the Members deal indeed with a complex system and thus face decisions
producing a multiplicity of effects on a variety of dimensions. This said, we will not proceed by formalising the different relationships at play, so as to explore the
behaviour of the system. Instead we will turn to the statements, so as to gauge how the RT Members themselves approached (and reduced) the complexity of the matter.