Forest Governance and Management Across Time Developing a New Forest Social Contract

About this book

The influence of the past, and of the future on current-time tradeoffs in the forest arena are particularly relevant given the long-term successions in forest landscapes and the hundred years' rotations in forestry. Historically established path dependencies and conflicts determine our present situation and delimit what is possible to achieve. Similarly, future trends and desires have a large influence on decision making. Nevertheless, decisions about forest governance and management are always made in the present – in the present-time appraisal of the developed situation, future alternatives and in negotiation between different perspectives, interests, and actors.

Forest Governance and Management Across Time explores historic and future outlooks as well as current tradeoffs and methods in forest governance and management. It emphasizes the generality and complexity with empirical data from Sweden and internationally. It first investigates, from a historical perspective, how previous forest policies and discourses have influenced current forest governance and management. Second, it considers methods to explore alternative forest futures and how the results from such investigations may influence the present. Third, it examines current methods of balancing tradeoffs in decision-making among ecosystem services. Based on the findings the authors develop an integrated approach – Reflexive Forestry – to support exchange of knowledge and understandings to enable capacity building and the establishment of common ground. Such societal agreements, or what the authors elaborate as forest social contracts, are sets of relational commitment between involved actors that may generate mutual action and a common directionality to meet contemporary challenges.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Looking back
Chapter 1 Forest Benefits
Chapter 2 Forest Knowledge and management
Chapter 3 Forest governance

Part II: Looking forward
Chapter 4 Methods to study forests’ futures
Chapter 5 Contemporary future forest research
Chapter 6 Reflective forest futures

Part III: Grasping the present
Chapter 7 Integrated approaches – in theory and practice
Chapter 8 Efforts to bridge governance and management in Swedish forests

Part IV Reflective Forestry
Chapter 9 The Principles of Reflective Forestry
Chapter 10 The toolbox of Reflective Forestry
Chapter 11 Towards a new forest social contract?

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Biography

Erland Mårald is Professor in History of Science and Ideas at Umea University, Sweden. Camilla Sandström is Professor in Political Science at Umea University, Sweden, and the deputy Program Director of the Future Forests research programme. Annika Nordin is Professor in Forest Ecophysiology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the Program Director of the Future Forests research programme.


Contributing authors:
- Lucy Rist
- Anna Sténs
- Karin Beland Lindahl
- Annika Carlsson-Kanyama
- Johanna Johansson
- Carina Keskitalo
- Hjalmar Laudon
- Rolf Lidskog
- Tomas Lämås
- Tomas Lundmark
- Urban Nilsson
- Eva-Maria Nordström
- Jean-Michel Roberge
- Johan Sonesson