AbstractInspired by collaborative governance theory, this study analyzes the process dynamics, outputs, and perceived impacts of a collaborative initiative launched by the Swedish government in 2014. It draws on extensive empirical sources related to the Swedish government's efforts to develop and implement a National Forest Programme (NFP) from 2014 to 2021. These sources include semistructured interviews, observations, public consultation comments, records of meetings and public hearings, reports from dialogues, and enacted policy documents. The results show that the collaboration initially provided a space for joint deliberation and capacity building on complex and contentious issues related to current land use. However, the final programme endorsed by the government in 2018 failed to initiate ambitious proposals on several key issues raised by participating actors, offering little indication of priorities and policy instruments to address fundamental gaps in current policy goals and their implementation. Consequently, the case reveals that it was not sufficient, and perhaps not even desirable, to address existing conflicts and policy problems in a comprehensive collaborative setting run by the Government Offices. The paper concludes with key insights for research on collaboration and suggests ways to move forward with policy designs that integrate multiple and competing policy goals in contested areas.
In recent years, a common theme in social science research, natural resource policies and practical management has been the increasing emphasis on partnerships and other forms of collaborative efforts as effective means to reach tangible and sustainable outcomes. Another significant trend is the increasing focus on the role of the forestry sector in managing the challenges of climate change, and the push towards a bio-based, low-carbon economy is at the epicenter of the public debate in several EU countries. Drawing on research on collaborative processes as well as research on policy design, this paper reviews the current trend to rely increasingly on collaborative efforts to improve sustainability, using forest governance in northern Europe as an illustrative case. It pays particular attention to efforts to balance concerned stakeholders through National Forest Programmes (NFPs), and considers these efforts in an international context. It concludes by elaborating on future research directions and policy recommendations that are critical to achieve intended outcomes in forest governance systems characterized by state-initiated collaborative processes as well as various forms of voluntary initiatives.
In recent decades, political scientists have devoted substantial attention to the changing role of the state towards more inclusion of non-state actors in policymaking. This deliberative turn, or move towards governance, may signal inability to handle complex problems without cooperation with nonstate actors. On the other hand, governance is frequently credited with generating legitimate decision-making processes and results. In some instances, non-governmental actors have even taken the lead in policymaking. One archetype of such private governance, which has received significant scholarly attention, is forest certification. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is frequently described as the most democratic and therefore legitimate forest certification organization since it grants equal voting rights to three stakeholder groups in the formulation of criteria for responsible forestry: environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), social groups (indigenous peoples and labor organizations) and forest owners. However, in Sweden, a country often described as a role model in forest certification, the FSC has increasingly received critique for failing to generate legitimate processes and results, and recently three of five ENGOs have chosen to exit the FSC organization. Such processes of de-legitimation have received little attention in the forest certification literature. This thesis therefore provides a critical assessment of the legitimacy of forest certification in Sweden. Legitimacy is analyzed through concerned stakeholders' perceptions of both procedural qualities (input legitimacy) and problem-solving capacity (output legitimacy). This study of legitimacy is combined with an assessment of the ability of certification to enhance environmental protection, defined as changes in both forest management practices and biophysical conditions. The thesis focuses not the least on legitimacy on the local level, which is where the actual implementation takes place. Today local studies of the legitimacy of forest certification are rare. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are applied and a number of sources are analyzed: forest monitoring data, survey data, interviews with and documents produced by the participating stakeholders. Papers I and IV analyze the perceived legitimacy of forest certification, while Papers II and III analyze forest certification schemes' ability to enhance environmental protection. The results show that a process of de-legitimation is occurring in Swedish forest certification. In particular, certification has lost legitimacy with ENGOs, which increasingly consider Swedish forest certification to lack both input legitimacy and output legitimacy. Moreover, although the Swedish FSC standard pays attention to reindeer husbandry, the results show that reindeer herders consider themselves to have limited power to influence long-term forest planning and management (low output legitimacy). The forest industry, on the other hand, increasingly grants legitimacy to forest certification due to customer demands, which are created not the least by pressures from international ENGOs and by EU regulation. The results also show that Swedish forest companies have paid more attention to their environmental practices after obtaining certification. However, to what extent these changes result in positive environmental impacts remains uncertain, especially since forests in Sweden grow slowly, which requires analyses over time. There are also measurement problems resulting from the low certification rate among small-scale forest owners and from the fact that certified small-scale owners tend to be more active in their management. These findings highlight that research on private forest governance should not neglect the role of the state, neither as a buyer nor as a regulator. These findings also suggest that further research should pay attention to power asymmetries in private governance and develop methods for better understanding and evaluating the certification schemes' environmental and social impacts.
The impacts of extreme weather events, causing severe storms and wildfires, cascade across administrative borders within a country, challenging the steering capacity of governance networks at different political scales. This paper examines how accountability and risk were constructed and negotiated in the aftermath of Sweden's largest wildfire. It draws on results from an interview study with executives of organizations and landowners involved, and an analysis of government reports about the wildfire's cause and consequences. Although the fire was human-caused, public administrative bodies paid considerable attention to the local emergency services and their poor handling of the wildfire, caused by lack of knowledge of forest fire behavior. The study confirms many of the challenges associated with governance networks. It finds that issues about who to hold accountable, in what forum and for what issue are not fully addressed, being overwhelmed by demands for better knowledge of forest fire prevention and improved coordination and collaboration. To conclude, the paper calls for a better-informed public administration, forest sector and interrelated networks that take responsibility for their actions or lack thereof.
Since the 2000s, consensus-oriented decision making has become increasingly common in the management of natural resources because of the recognition that collaborative processes may enhance the legitimacy of decision making and facilitate effective implementation. Previous research has identified a number of problems with the design and practical facilitation of collaborative processes. Structured decision making (SDM) has been developed as an alternative suitable for decision making characterized by complexity, stakeholder controversy, and scientific uncertainty. Our aim was to investigate the feasibility and practical relevance of collaboration and dialogue inspired by SDM in the sphere of forest management. The methods used included analyses of meetings records and semistructured interviews with participating stakeholders and organizers of a collaborative process focused on improving the management of Swedish forests in the young forest phase. The results show that the SDM rationale of step-by-step teamwork, the involvement of experts, and guidance by an independent facilitator has a number of merits. These merits included the creation of genuine discussion with careful consideration of different interests and values, thus building trust among stakeholders and the Swedish Forest Agency. However, at the end of the process, some issues still remained unclear, including how the decision options would be made practically useful and accessible to forest owners. Furthermore, concerns were raised about the lack of novelty of the options. As a result, there was uncertainty about the extent to which the options would contribute to a more varied forest landscape given the multiple values involved. We conclude with some remarks on the potential future of engaging SDM in the forestry sector.
This study investigates how and by whom the Swedish (forest) bioeconomy has been shaped so far. We unpack emerging bioeconomies as discursive constructs and use the 'apparatus of capture' as a conceptual framework to understand and rethink the Swedish bioeconomy. Based on analysis of empirical data from multiple sources (e.g., online surveys, in-depth interviews, participatory observations), we identify a closed bioeconomy network structure that includes forest industries, major forest owner associations, regional councils and research institutes/universities. The network (re)produces three key storylines that appeal to the majority of parties in the national parliament, defines the boundaries of relevant expertise, and discredits environmental regulation and expertise. Through these storylines the Swedish bioeconomy is turned into an issue of innovation governance, which blurs the boundaries between public and private interests in forests. To counteract future capture, different types of knowledges and forest perspectives need further exploration in Swedish bioeconomy and forest governance.
This study examines which kinds of social benefits derived from forests are emphasised by Swedish stakeholders and what governance modes and management tools they accept. Our study shows that there exists a great variety among stakeholders' perceptions of forests' social values, where tourism and recreation is the most common reference. There are also differences in preferred governance modes and management where biomass and bioenergy sectors advocate business as usual (i.e. framework regulations and voluntarism) and other stakeholders demand rigid tools (i.e. coercion and targeting) and improved landscape planning. This divide will have implications for future policy orientations and require deliberative policy processes and improved dialogue among stakeholders and authorities. We suggest that there is a potential for these improvements, since actors from almost all stakeholder groups support local influence on governance and management, acknowledged and maintained either by the authorities, i.e. targeting, or by the stakeholders themselves, i.e. voluntarism. ; Future Forests
"The Swedish forestry model" refers to the forest regime that evolved following the 1993 revision of the Swedish Forestry Act. It is key to Swedish forest politics and used to capture the essence of a sustainable way of managing forests. However, the ideas, institutions and practices comprising the model have not been comprehensively analyzed previously. Addressing this knowledge gap, we use frame analysis and a Pathways approach to investigate the underlying governance model, focusing on the way policy problems are addressed, goals, implementation procedures, outcomes and the resulting pathways to sustainability. We suggest that the institutionally embedded response to pressing sustainability challenges and increasing demands is expansion, inclusion and integration: more of everything. The more-of-everything pathway is influenced by ideas of ecological modernization and the optimistic view that existing resources can be increased. Our findings suggest that in effect it prioritizes the economic dimension of sustainability. While broadening out policy formulation it closes down the range of alternative outputs, a shortcoming that hampers its capacity to respond to current sustainability challenges. Consequently, there is a need for a broad public debate regarding not only the role of forests in future society, but also the operationalization of sustainable development. ; Highlights The study is influenced by frame analysis and a STEPS Pathways approach. The study builds on legal acts and bylaws, governmental bills and commissions. The Swedish forest governance system has successively expanded and broadened out. The current Swedish forestry model promotes "more of everything". The Swedish forestry model lacks mechanisms for implementation and tradeoffs. ; Future Forests
"The Swedish forestry model" refers to the forest regime that evolved following the 1993 revision of the Swedish Forestry Act. It is key to Swedish forest politics and used to capture the essence of a sustainable way of managing forests. However, the ideas, institutions and practices comprising the model have not been comprehensively analyzed previously. Addressing this knowledge gap,we use frame analysis and a Pathways approach to investigate the underlying governance model, focusing on the way policy problems are addressed, goals, implementation procedures, outcomes and the resulting pathways to sustainability.Wesuggest that the institutionally embedded response to pressing sustainability challenges and increasing demands is expansion, inclusion and integration: more of everything. The more-of-everything pathway is influenced by ideas of ecological modernization and the optimistic view that existing resources can be increased. Our findings suggest that in effect it prioritizes the economic dimension of sustainability. While broadening out policy formulation it closes down the range of alternative outputs, a shortcoming that hampers its capacity to respond to current sustainability challenges. Consequently, there is a need for a broad public debate regarding not only the role of forests in future society, but also the operationalization of sustainable development. ; Funding Agencies: Swedish Forestry Industry Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) limed University Forestry Research Institute of Sweden (Skogforsk)
The extent to which scientific knowledge translates into practice is a pervasive question. We analysed to what extent and how ecological scientists gave input to policy for two approaches advocated for promoting forest biodiversity in production forests in Sweden: green-tree retention (GTR) and continuous-cover forestry (CCF). GTR was introduced into forest policy in the 1970s and became widely implemented in the 1990s. Ecological scientists took part in the policy process by providing expert opinions, educational activities and as lobbyists, long before research confirming the positive effects of GTR on biodiversity was produced. In contrast, CCF was essentially banned in forest legislation in 1979. In the 1990s, policy implicitly opened up for CCF implementation, but CCF still remains largely a rare silvicultural outlier. Scientific publications addressing CCF appeared earlier than GTR studies, but with less focus on the effects on biodiversity. Ecological scientists promoted CCF in certain areas, but knowledge from other disciplines and other socio-political factors appear to have been more important than ecological arguments in the case of CCF. The wide uptake of GTR was enhanced by its consistency with the silvicultural knowledge and normative values that forest managers had adopted for almost a century, whereas CCF challenged those ideas. Public pressure and institutional requirements were also key to GTR implementation but were not in place for CCF. Thus, scientific ecological knowledge may play an important role for policy uptake and development, but knowledge from other research disciplines and socio-political factors are also important.
