Karin Beland Lindahl

Future forests: Perceptions and strategies of key actors

Abstract This paper investigates how key actors perceive the future of the forest sector: how they position themselves in relation to climate, energy and demography related trends. Actors’ perceptions of future challenges and opportunities influence their choice of strategy and action. Actors’ relative capacity to realise their visions, in turn, shape future forest use. Frame analysis is used to explore selected actors perceptions and strategies and the existence of major divisions, i.e. frame conflicts. Empirically, the study is based on the case of Sweden as a typical boreal forest producing region. Actors’ perceptions of the challenges facing the forest sector diverge widely. Yet, most actors see the future of the forest sector as linked to broader issues of climate mitigation and energy transition. These issues trigger fundamental discussions about social change and the role of forests in future society. A major division separates actors who perceive biomass supply as unlimited, or at least not constraining, and those who stress scarcity and re-distribution of resources. This difference, or frame conflict, is reflected in actors’ forest related strategies and may fuel future forest debates and conflicts.

Theorising pathways to sustainability

ABSTRACT Using a Pathways approach, controversies over environmental and natural resource management are viewed as expressions of alternative, or competing, pathways to sustainability. This supports deeper understanding of the underlying causes of natural resource management controversies. The framework is composed of two elements: the STEPS (Social, Technological, and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Pathways approach and frame analysis. Many sustainable development dilemmas are played out in specific places and consequently, the Pathways approach is integrated with a place-based frame analysis. The resulting framework guides empirical investigation in place-based contexts. This theorising about sustainability science can be used to cast light on contested natural resource management issues, in this case mining in northern Sweden. By exposing the range of alternative Pathways to critical norms of sustainable development, we ascertain whether action alternatives are compatible with sustainable futures. The framework provides a way in which sustainability science can better understand the origins of natural resource management conflicts, characterise the positions of the actors involved, identify the potential for cooperation between stakeholders leading to policy resolution and judge what Pathways help or hinder the pursuit of sustainable development. In addition, it can enhance sustainability science by guiding integrative sustainability research at the project scale.

Understanding consistencies and gaps between desired forest futures: An analysis of visions from stakeholder groups in Sweden

Conflicting perspectives on forests has for a long time challenged forest policy development in Sweden. Disagreements about forest futures create intractable deadlocks when stakeholders talk past each other. The purpose of this study is to move beyond this situation through the application of participatory backcasting. By comparing visions of the future forest among stakeholder groups, we highlight contemporary trajectories and identify changes that were conceived as desirable. We worked with four groups: the Biomass and Bioenergy group, the Conservation group, the Sami Livelihood group and the Recreation and Rural Development group; in total representatives from 40 organizations participated in workshops articulating the groups’ visions. Our results show well-known tensions such as intrinsic versus instrumental values but also new ones concerning forests’ social values. Identified synergies include prioritization of rural development, new valued-added forest products and diversified forest management. The results may feed directly into forest policy processes facilitating the process and break current deadlocks.

Actors’ Perceptions and Strategies: Forests and Pathways to Sustainability

This chapter discusses how the future is handled by actors in the present. It investigates how actors’ perceptions of the future—its challenges and its opportunities—influence their strategies and actions. The chapter starts with a frame analysis exploring the visions of a range of actors relevant to Swedish forest sector development. It aims to describe major divisions in the debate on future forest use and on a variety of ways to deal with uncertainty, ambiguity, and ignorance. The analysis relates to international processes important to the Swedish forest sector and feeds into a discussion of competing pathways to “sustainability”.

Transdisciplinarity in practice: aims, collaboration and integration in a Swedish research programme

This article discusses the practice of crossdisciplinarity in the context of future-oriented sustainability studies. Much research into crossdisciplinarity has concentrated on programmatic and epistemological questions. In this study, we focus on research practice and efforts to realize transdisciplinary aims across a research programme. We use the Swedish Future Forests programme as a case study and explore its aims, forms of collaboration and level of conceptual integration. The study demonstrates that efficient integration requires organizational settings able to support the development of a common conceptual framework. To achieve this, the aims and forms of collaboration and the means of integration ought to be consistent. Far-reaching integration and short-term instrumental objectives may be difficult to combine because integration requires intellectual space, specific boundary settings and time. Short-term instrumental objectives may also hamper open and reflexive discussion of alternative pathways to sustainability and of how participating actors shape the research process. These insights may help researchers and participating actors to design research programmes that enable a realization of their transdisciplinary ambitions.

Competing pathways to sustainability? : Exploring conflicts over mine establishments in the Swedish mountain region

Natural resource (NR) exploitation often gives rise to conflict. While most actors intend to manage collectively used places and their NRs sustainably, they may disagree about what this entails. This article accordingly explores the origin of NR conflicts by analysing them in terms of competing pathways to sustainability. By comparing conflicts over mine establishments in three places in northern Sweden, we specifically explore the role of place-based perceptions and experiences. The results indicate that the investigated conflicts go far beyond the question of metals and mines. The differences between pathways supporting mine establishment and those opposing it refer to fundamental ideas about human-nature relationships and sustainable development (SD). The study suggests that place-related parameters affect local interpretations of SD and mobilisation in ways that explain why resistance and conflict exist in some places but not others. A broader understanding of a particular conflict and its specific place-based trajectory may help uncover complex underlying reasons. However, our comparative analysis also demonstrates that mining conflicts in different places share certain characteristics. Consequently, a site-specific focus ought to be combined with attempts to compare, or map, conflicts at a larger scale to improve our understanding of when and how conflicts evolve. By addressing the underlying causes and origins of contestation, this study generates knowledge needed to address NR management conflicts effectively and legitimately.

Nordic Forest Futures – An Introduction

This book focuses on how global trends are likely to affect the future use of Nordic forests. The aim is to contribute to a broad debate about future Nordic forest management. The book invites professionals in the forest sector, civil society organizations and decision makers to be part of a dialog about the opportunities, challenges, and trade-offs associated with future forest use. The book is produced within the Future Forests Research Program (www.futureforests.se), a major cross-disciplinary research effort to address future Swedish forest use in the light of climate change and an increasing demand for forest-related products and services.

The Future Use of Nordic Forests

Diverse as they are in their histories and in the organization of their forest sectors, most Nordic countries have this in common: their economies and cultures are substantially based on the utilization of various forest resources. This book explores Nordic forest futures and presents research results that form part of a scientific foundation for considering how to balance the functions of forests. It is particularly concerned with global trends that may affect the future use of boreal forests. Chapters investigate inter-alia the growing world population and the expected economic growth in countries with huge populations, and assess the resulting pressure on all land-based resources. Authors examine the urgent need for solutions to the energy crisis, consider worrying climate scenarios and provide a global outlook on bioenergy futures. Readers will discover how these developments will and must influence long-term strategic decisions on the future use of Nordic forests. The challenges and possible responses for future forest governance and forestry issues emerge, as the chapters go on to consider the multiple pressures in particular on the Swedish Forester Model, among other themes.