Camilla Sandström

Local Consequences of Applying International Norms: Differences in the Application of Forest Certification in Northern Sweden, Northern Finland, and Northwest Russia

Forest certification, developed in the early 1990s, is a process in which independent assessors grant use of the certification label to producers who meet certain environmental and social criteria set for their forest products. This label was quickly seen to offer a market advantage and to signal corporate social and environmental responsibility. This paper focuses on international norms pertaining to environmental and indigenous rights, as manifested in cases of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)- and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)-compatible certification, and how these norms have been applied domestically and perceived locally in different states. Case studies are drawn from northern Sweden, northern Finland, and three regions in northwest Russia. The studies illustrate that the choice and implementation of certification type depend considerably on national infrastructure and market characteristics and result in substantial differences in the impact that international norms have at the local level.

Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration in Russian and Swedish Model Forest Initiatives: Adaptive Governance Toward Sustainable Forest Management?

Building the adaptive capacity of interlinked social and ecological systems is assumed to improve implementation of sustainable forest management (SFM) policies. One mechanism is collaborative lear ...

Institutional Dimensions of Comanagement: Participation, Power, and Process

The arguments in favor of comanagement are relevant in many situations where there are conflicts over the use of natural resources. However, the complexity of factors associated with comanagement make its implementation difficult. A general conclusion of considerations based on analytical frameworks developed to study comanagement is that implementation can be facilitated through a design consistent with three key concepts: participation, power sharing, and process. However, since these concepts are treated ambiguously in the literature, their utility as guiding principles can be limited in real life situations. This ambiguity may be traced back to underlying theoretical assumptions, from either sociological or rational choice institutionalism embedded in the analytical frameworks of comanagement. Depending on the type of framework adopted, comanagement arrangements can be defined as either a success or a failure, indicating a need to develop more robust frameworks to guide politicians or managers introducing comanagement arrangements as an effective management tool.

A meta‐analysis of studies on attitudes toward bears and wolves across Europe 1976–2012

The ranges of wolves (Canis lupus) and bears (Ursus arctos) across Europe have expanded recently, and it is important to assess public attitudes toward this expansion because responses toward these species vary widely. General attitudes toward an object are good predictors of broad behavioral patterns; thus, attitudes toward wolves and bears can be used as indicators to assess the social foundation for future conservation efforts. However, most attitude surveys toward bears and wolves are limited in scope, both temporally and spatially, and provide only a snapshot of attitudes. To extend the results of individual surveys over a much larger temporal and geographical range so as to identify transnational patterns and changes in attitudes toward bears and wolves over time, we conducted a meta-analysis. Our analysis included 105 quantitative surveys conducted in 24 countries from 1976 to 2012. Across Europe, peoples attitudes were more positive toward bears than wolves. Attitudes toward bears became more positive over time, but attitudes toward wolves seemed to become less favorable the longer people coexisted with them. Younger and more educated people had more positive attitudes toward wolves and bears than people who had experienced damage from these species, and farmers and hunters had less positive attitudes toward wolves than the general public. For bears attitudes among social groups did not differ. To inform conservation of large carnivores, we recommend that standardized longitudinal surveys be established to monitor changes in attitudes over time relative to carnivore population development. Our results emphasize the need for interdisciplinary research in this field and more advanced explanatory models capable of capturing individual and societal responses to changes in large carnivore policy and management.

Management of Large Carnivores in Fennoscandia: New Patterns of Regional Participation

Countries are increasingly shifting responsibility for large carnivore management from central to local government authorities. The three countries in Fennoscandia—Finland, Norway, and Sweden—are no exception. In all three countries new approaches to large carnivore management have emerged, including some elements of decentralization, which is intended to increase efficiency, and improve the equity, participation, and transparency of the government to the citizenry. Although the three countries are similar in terms of their biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics, they have chosen three different decentralization strategies. In Norway a representative model of decentralization has emerged, whereas the Swedish and Finnish model has a corporatist character. This comparative study of policies relating to the large carnivores in the three countries focuses on the actors, and their powers and accountability, and demonstrates that the different strategies result in no significant increase in power at the local or regional level.

A New Paradigm for Adaptive Management

Uncertainty is a pervasive feature in natural resource management. Adaptive management, an approach that focuses on identifying critical uncertainties to be reduced via diagnostic management experiments, is one favored approach for tackling this reality. While adaptive management is identified as a key method in the environmental management toolbox, there remains a lack of clarity over when its use is appropriate or feasible. Its implementation is often viewed as suitable only in a limited set of circumstances. Here we restructure some of the ideas supporting this view, and show why much of the pessimism around AM may be unwarranted. We present a new framework for deciding when AM is appropriate, feasible, and subsequently successful. We thus present a new paradigm for adaptive management that shows that there are no categorical limitations to its appropriate use, the boundaries of application being defined by problem conception and the resources available to managers. In doing so we also separate adaptive management as a management tool, from the burden of failures that result from the complex policy, social, and institutional environment within which management occurs.

On the multifunctionality of hunting – an institutional analysis of eight cases from Europe and Africa

In many contemporary societies, multiple functions are connected to hunting. Here, we use the concept of multifunctionality to investigate the role of hunting beyond its traditional function of supplying meat. Hunting may contribute, for example, to biodiversity conservation, recreation and the preservation of economies and cultures in rural areas. Our comparative analysis of hunting in eight study sites in Europe and Africa examines the tensions and trade-offs between these ecological, economic and social functions of hunting, and investigates the interplay between the institutions regulating these functions to better understand conflicts over hunting. Based on this analysis, we present institutional arrangements that have developed to address these challenges of multifunctionality, and explore the institutional change brought about by such arrangements. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study for policy and institutional design.

Progressing toward co-management through collaborative learning: forestry and reindeer husbandry in dialogue

With complex common pool resources, it is important to balance the multitude of interests in order to generate a sustainable management regime. This is not the case in the northern parts of Sweden, where forest resources are used for different extractive purposes by forest companies and the reindeer herding industry. In many respects, the present situation represents a classic collective-action problem with a number of reasons why no cooperative behaviour might be expected. This article illuminates the relationship between the two industries in an historical, ecological and institutional perspective in order to explain the limited scope of coordinated action between the two actors. It also, through the use of collaborative learning techniques and scenario methods, explores the possibilities for the two industries to consider each others needs and to identify strategies for co-existence and co-management. The testing of a broad range of scenarios among a selected group of stakeholders leads to the identification of possibilities for improving the management of the forest and lichen resource by changing institutional arrangements and improving coordination between the stakeholders.

Socio-ecological implications of modifying rotation lengths in forestry

The rotation length is a key component of even-aged forest management systems. Using Fennoscandian forestry as a case, we review the socio-ecological implications of modifying rotation lengths relative to current practice by evaluating effects on a range of ecosystem services and on biodiversity conservation. The effects of shortening rotations on provisioning services are expected to be mostly negative to neutral (e.g. production of wood, bilberries, reindeer forage), while those of extending rotations would be more varied. Shortening rotations may help limit damage by some of today’s major damaging agents (e.g. root rot, cambium-feeding insects), but may also increase other damage types (e.g. regeneration pests) and impede climate mitigation. Supporting (water, soil nutrients) and cultural (aesthetics, cultural heritage) ecosystem services would generally be affected negatively by shortened rotations and positively by extended rotations, as would most biodiversity indicators. Several effect modifiers, such as changes to thinning regimes, could alter these patterns.

The problem of spatial scale when studying human dimensions of a natural resource conflict : human and carnivores as a case study

Some surveys are performed at a spatial scale that hides the core of the problem. This is not a trivial problem if local members of the public and more distant respondents disagree over a certain issue. We contrast a Swedish national, proportional survey with corresponding regional and local surveys. We use three survey questions about wolves to illustrate the risk of extrapolation from proportional national surveys to areas where human and nature conservation issues are in conflict. As attitudes towards large carnivores generally tend to be favourable amongst the general public, but negative amongst those most likely to be adversely affected, surveys performed at a too large a spatial scale do not capture the problem or reveal disagreements between local and general public. This could lead to a conceptual mismatch between the spatial scales of, first, the natural resource problem and, second human population sampling. Our study in the mountain region of northern Sweden illustrates biases potentially introduced to controversial issues tied to local problems by using proportional national surveys. We suggest over-sampling in problem areas contrasted with proportional regional/national sampling, or proportional sampling matching the scale of problem, to identify the driving mechanisms and related variables.