In the business world, there's a simple illustrative story that highlights the difference between involvement and commitment. One version goes like this:

A chicken and a pig were walking down the road when the chicken said, "Hey pig, let's open a restaurant together! We'll serve breakfast — bacon and eggs. Great idea, right?" The pig thought for a moment and replied, "Listen, chicken, for you, it's just involvement — you lay a few eggs and you're done. But for me, it's total commitment. I have to give up a part of myself, maybe even my life."

This story is often used to illustrate the difference between business owners and consultants, but it also works well as a metaphor for the significant disparity in impact when it comes to certain decisions or actions — depending on whether you're the "pig" or the "chicken."

I'm using this story to explain why I believe there's been so much uproar and resistance in Estonia recently to the development of any major infrastructure project — be it the Rail Baltica route, the expansion of the Nursipalu Training Area or, most recently, the construction of wind farms both offshore and on land.

In these kinds of cases, people can roughly be divided into two groups: those who end up in the role of the pig — putting their own skin in the game, perhaps by seeing their property values fall, their living conditions worsen or their health put at risk — and those in the role of the chicken. Chickens still contribute, for example by paying taxes, but otherwise their lives continue largely unchanged.

In this metaphor, the eggs and bacon represent the public good we're striving for. After all, people are hungry and need to eat — just as we need clean electricity or faster transport connections to the rest of Europe.

In my view, the social tensions in Estonia arise from a failure to understand the difference between the roles of "chickens" and "pigs" and from an inability to recognize the disproportionate impact these projects can have on the latter.

There's a big difference whether you're paying a bit more in taxes for green energy or whether you're risking your health living in a degraded environment or watching your property lose value. For someone in the chicken role, it may be enough to know that their tax euros supposedly go toward cleaner electricity or faster train travel to Berlin.

But for someone in the pig's role — someone who is, figuratively speaking, being asked to sacrifice a piece of themselves — that's not going to cut it. It doesn't help when some "chicken" starts clucking in the media, lecturing others on why this or that project is supposedly good for all of us.

In the long term, this kind of conflict benefits no one. To me, both scenarios are equally bleak: a future Estonia with a ruined environment and frayed social fabric or a country where the main source of income is selling wooden spoons to tourists and wandering around in folk costumes for cash. That could very well be where we end up if infrastructure projects continue to face the same painful obstacles.

To help resolve this, I have a few ideas — admittedly naive ones — based mostly on lessons learned from past mistakes.

First, we need to acknowledge the different roles people find themselves in and take those into account when engaging with them.

A good example is the expansion of the Nursipalu Training Area, where those who lived in nearby farms ended up in the pig's role. I dare say there was broad public support for the expansion — until things started to go sideways and people, out of empathy or solidarity, began to support the "pigs." At the same time, all sorts of other creatures — feathered and furry alike — caught the scent of blood, swarmed in and began exploiting the conflict for their own interests, of course under the banner of protecting the locals.

While it might seem that putting a spotlight on an issue helps defend the pigs' interests, that's not necessarily true in the long run. It often leads to labeling, rising tensions in society and the eventual failure of even reasonable and necessary projects.

Second, Estonia seems to suffer from a bizarre belief that bigger always means more efficient and more efficient is automatically better. There are plenty of examples. If public sector costs need to be cut, the solution is to merge two agencies. Reviewing processes and improving efficiency? That's not even considered — it's too complicated and everyone's too busy.

We plan offshore wind farms and make the turbines as tall and numerous as possible. That's the most efficient setup from an electricity production standpoint, so obviously it must also be best for birds, people and fish, right? See a vacant plot in a single-family housing area? Let's slap a three-story apartment building on it — we'll sell more units. Since that's the most efficient use of the land, it must also be the best for city residents.

Efficiency may be better — but not always. It depends on whose perspective you're looking from. The biggest issue with big projects is their big impact. The bigger the impact, the bigger the backlash.

Just imagine the kind of opposition residents would mount if a multi-unit building were constructed right next to their homes. Now compare that to a scenario where a regular single-family house, consistent with the rest of the neighborhood, is built on an empty lot.

In the first case, residents become pigs — their environment worsens and property values drop significantly. In the second, they get friendly new neighbors instead of a barren lot. If we stop letting wind farm developers build monstrous turbines, they'll eventually go back to making smaller ones. In Europe, there soon won't be many suitable sites left for these giants anyway, as public opposition grows — not just in Estonia.

If the offshore wind farms near the Kingdom of Torgu and the western coast of Saaremaa had been planned 50 kilometers from the coast instead of just 10 — as is apparently required in Scandinavian countries — or if the turbines were 100 meters tall instead of 300, as initially planned, groups like the Saare Coastal Folk Society and similar organizations might never have formed and public resistance would be far weaker.

I argue that in many cases, developers have shot themselves in the foot by chasing size and efficiency without accounting for the size of the impact — and thus the inevitable backlash.

There are scientific studies that both support and reject claims about the harmful effects of large turbines on human health and nature. Some say the impact is significant and negative; others claim there's no threat at all. It's a complex issue — health problems can have many causes and it's hard to conclusively blame turbines.

But when we face a risk we can't measure, it's smarter to avoid the risk altogether than to argue about its size. Why step into a bog if you don't know how deep it is? It's wiser to walk around it, in which case its depth no longer matters.

Third, we seem to lack a basic sense of care. Let's give the people stuck in the pig's role the option not just to endure the negative impacts, but to avoid them altogether.

Why is it that in Estonia we can find hundreds of millions or even a couple of billion euros in taxpayer money to pour into concrete or, in the most extreme cases, to subsidize the construction and operation of offshore wind farms, but when it comes to compensating people for losses to their health or quality of life, the money suddenly dries up and the sums offered are laughable?

Is it Estonian envy at play? How can we possibly accept that a familiar farmer living near the Nursipalu Training Area might suddenly become a millionaire overnight? Or is it simply a lack of compassion — reflected in austerity-driven policy guidelines handed down to the civil servants who wrote the legislation governing compensation?

Just imagine what would happen if the state generously and immediately compensated people in the pig's role for potential negative impacts — enough that they could actually choose whether to stay put and take the risk or move to Vändra or Marbella instead. It's not unthinkable that there'd be a competition over which area gets to host the next project.

In conclusion, for someone in the pig's role, these developments represent a major negative change.

If we apply Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations theory to change management, we see a familiar pattern: about 16 percent of people support any given change and another 16 percent oppose it unconditionally. The remaining 68 percent are open to influence — and it's this group we should focus on.

So going forward, we could try two things.

First, abandon the dogma that bigger is better and more efficient. Let's build infrastructure projects of reasonable size, minimizing their negative impact.

Second, distinguish between "pigs" and "chickens" and pay generous compensation to those unfortunate enough to end up in the pig's role. Maybe then, the prevailing view of the state as an institution that exists only to screw over Estonians will start to fade.

When all costs are tallied, this approach might not even be more expensive than the current mess. Instead, we'd gain in soft values, foster better social cohesion and continue living — and laying eggs — in peace, just as we've done for thousands of years in Estonia.

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