Climate risks and forest practices: forest owners' acceptance of advice concerning climate change

ABSTRACT

Based on qualitative interviews with Swedish forest owners this study focuses on climate change, risk management and forest governance from the perspective of the forest owners. The Swedish forest governance system has undergone extensive deregulation, with the result that social norms and knowledge dissemination are seen by the state as important means of influencing forest owners' understandings and practices. Drawing on Foucault's concept of governmentality this study contributes knowledge on how forest owners understand and manage climate-related risk and their acceptance of advice. From the interview study, three main conclusions can be drawn: (1) forest owners' considerations largely concern ordinary forestry activities; (2) knowledge about forest management and climate adaptation combines experiences and ideas from various sources; and (3) risk awareness and knowledge of “best practices” are not enough to ensure change in forestry practices. The results of this study show that the forest owners have to be selective and negotiate about what knowledge to consider relevant and meaningful for their own forest practice. Accordingly, local forest management can be understood as situated in a web of multifarious interests, claims, concerns and knowledges, where climate change adaptation is but one of several aspects that forest owners have to consider.

KEYWORDS:

• Forestry
• governmentality
• advisory practices
• risk
• climate change
• adaptation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Rolf Lidskog http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6735-0011

Notes

1. All forest owners can register at the SFA website, where they get a personal account containing comprehensive information about the forest estate, including maps, planning tools, checklists, and a complete guide to creating and submitting logging reports.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was written as part of the interdisciplinary program Future Forests financed by Mistra (the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research), the Forestry Research Institute of Sweden (Skogforsk), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and Umeå University.