The Controversy Over Protected Areas and Forest-Sector Employment in Norrbotten, Sweden: Forest Stakeholder Perceptions and Statistics

Abstract

Even as environmental protection constitutes an aim of national policy, the conservation of productive forest may impact communities reliant on local employment, with one example being Norrbotten County in Northern Sweden. The study focuses on the perceptions of environmental protection among stakeholders in forestry and of its relation to employment and how these compare with quantitative impacts of environmental protection. Results show that although forest stakeholders believe that forestry in the region is threatened by environmental protection, protection has thus far had only a limited impact on employment in the sector when compared to the impacts of internal processes of rationalization and mechanization. That stakeholders emphasize environmental protection as a crucial concern and risk may be due to their limited control over environmental protection processes as compared to internal processes in the production and management of the resource and the future of the forest economy.

Keywords:

• forest-sector employment
• Norrbotten
• people's perceptions
• protected areas
• Sweden

Notes

*Protected productive forest in national parks and nature reserves, 2003. Source for data: The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (2007) and Statistics Sweden (2007).

Note. Source: Statistics Sweden (2007) and ASTRID (2003). Category symbols: ^∧ = forest municipality, ^∧∧ = mountain municipality, ≈ = coast municipality.

*Based on population aged 16–64 years.

Note. Source: ASTRID (2003).

Note. Source: Swedish National Forest Inventory (2004), Swedish Statistical Yearbook of Forestry (2004), and Statistics Sweden (2007).