A Role for Authority Supervision in Impact Assessment? Examples from Finnish EIA Reviews

With the boom in mining in Fennoscandia, reconciliation of competing land use interests in governance procedures such as impact assessment has come to the fore. One of the functions that has been applied to varying degrees in national frameworks is supervision of the procedure by a responsible authority. This paper examines review statements issued in the context of mining project assessments in northern Finland – one of the countries implementing authority supervision. The study shows that third-party review may play a role in highlighting the importance of competing land use interest such as reindeer herding. Attention to such interests, however, remains limited by the application of spatial planning in the case and by consent processing, up until the end of the period examined. Among the lessons for impact assessment is the need for methodologies for accommodating anticipatory types of (practice-based and non-scientific) information. Unless these types of sources are considered valid, the possibility of substantializing anticipation and finding solutions along those lines will be missed, with the risk of making things on the ground worse before the need for mitigation measures is comprehended in the face of materializing impacts.(Published: May 2017)Citation: L. Solbär & E. Carina H. Keskitalo. “A Role for Authority Supervision in Impact Assessment? Examples from Finnish EIA Reviews.” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 8, 2017, pp. 52–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v8.66

Preparing for and Responding to Disturbance: Examples from the Forest Sector in Sweden and Canada

Coping or adaptation following large-scale disturbance may depend on the political system and its preparedness and policy development in relation to risks. Adaptive or foresight planning is necessary in order to account and plan for potential risks that may increase or take place concurrently with climate change. Forests constitute relevant examples of large-scale renewable resource systems that have been directly affected by recent environmental and social changes, and where different levels of management may influence each other. This article views disturbances in the forest sectors of Sweden and Canada, two large forest nations with comparable forestry experiences, in order to elucidate the preparedness and existing responses to multiple potential stresses. The article concludes that the two countries are exposed to stresses that indicate the importance of the governing and institutional system particularly with regard to multi-level systems including federal and EU levels. While economic change largely results in privatization of risk onto individual companies and their economic resources (in Canada coupled with a contestation of institutional systems and equity in these), storm and pest outbreaks in particular challenge institutional capacities at administrative levels, within the context provided by governance and tenure systems.In Sweden, funding from the research agency FORMAS, the MISTRA Arctic Futures programme, and the Future Forests programme (funded by research agency MISTRA, the forest industries, Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) as well as from the EU for data collection is acknowledged. Ryan Bullock acknowledges funding provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by the Mistra Arctic Futures programme for preparing this paper.https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/2/2/50

‘‘Generality of mis-fit’’? The real-life difficulty of matching scales in an interconnected world

A clear understanding of processes at multiple scales and levels is of special significance when conceiving strategies for human–environment interactions. However, understanding and application of the scale concept often differ between administrative-political and ecological disciplines. These mirror major differences in potential solutions whether and how scales can, at all, be made congruent. As a result, opportunities of seeking ‘‘goodness-of-fit’’ between different concepts of governance should perhaps be reconsidered in the light of a potential ‘‘generality of mis-fit.’’ This article reviews the interdisciplinary considerations inherent in the concept of scale in its ecological, as well as administrative-political, significance and argues that issues of how to manage ‘‘misfit’’ should be awarded more emphasis in social-ecological research and management practices. These considerations are exemplified by the case of reindeer husbandry in Fennoscandia. Whilst an indigenous small-scale practice, reindeer husbandry involves multi-level ecological and administrative-political complexities—complexities thatwe argue may arise in any multi-level system.</div

Rural-Urban Policies : Changing Conceptions of the Human-Environment Relationship

Peer reviewedPostprin

The role of the social sciences and economics in understanding and informing tree biosecurity policy and planning: a global summary and synthesis

Increased global biosecurity threats to trees, woods and forests have been strongly linked to the upsurge in worldwide trade and the expansion of tourism. A whole range of social, economic and political actors are implicated and affected by the movement of pests and diseases along these international pathways. A number of factors affect the actions of stakeholders, and wider public, including their values and motivations, how risks are perceived and acted upon, their ability to act, as well as the existing regulatory and economic environment. Understanding these factors is key to any future attempts to improve biosecurity policy and practice, and we present available evidence on six key dimension: (1) the role of different stakeholders and the broader public within tree health; (2) levels of knowledge and awareness of tree pests and diseases amongst the variety of end-user ‘stakeholder’ groups, and influences on their attitudes and practices; (3) social acceptability of management approaches; (4) the impact of formal and informal governance arrangements; (5) risk communication; (6) economic analyses on the impact of tree pests. We conclude by identifying evidence gaps and emphasising the need for better integration within the social sciences and between the social and natural sciences to promote effective interdisciplinary and policy-relevant contributions to tree health

The symple choice algorythm for estimating of parametersof network protetion prioroties in analitical hierarchic process

Humans depend on services provided by ecosystems, and how services are affected by climate change is increasingly studied. Few studies, however, address changes likely to affect services from seminatural ecosystems. We analyzed ecosystem goods and services in natural and seminatural systems, specifically how they are expected to change as a result of projected climate change during the 21st century. We selected terrestrial and freshwater systems in northernmost Europe, where climate is anticipated to change more than the global average, and identified likely changes in ecosystem services and their societal consequences. We did this by assembling experts from ecology, social science, and cultural geography in workshops, and we also performed a literature review. Results show that most ecosystem services are affected by multiple factors, often acting in opposite directions. Out of 14 services considered, 8 are expected to increase or remain relatively unchanged in supply, and 6 are expected to decrease. Although we do not predict collapse or disappearance of any of the investigated services, the effects of climate change in conjunction with potential economical and societal changes may exceed the adaptive capacity of societies. This may result in societal reorganization and changes in ways that ecosystems are used. Significant uncertainties and knowledge gaps in the forecast make specific conclusions about societal responses to safeguard human well-being questionable. Adapting to changes in ecosystem services will therefore require consideration of uncertainties and complexities in both social and ecological responses. The scenarios presented here provide a framework for future studies exploring such issues

Constructing forest owner identities and governing decisions and relationships: the owner as distant consumer in Swedish forestry

Increasing diversification, urbanization, economic restructuring, and distances, as well as declining economic dependence on forestry, are changing the characteristics of forest ownership and the conditions for environmental governance. Through an interview-based case study of Swedish forestry industrial actors, this article examined the organizational and governing aspects and implications of recent shifts by exploring the strategies and marketing/governing technologies of private/industrial forestry organizations. With a focus on local implementation, this study shows that forest owners are largely constructed, and engaged, as consumers (rather than, for example, as timber suppliers) and are governed, partly at a distance, through specific forms of guidance, technologies, and knowledge to overcome the lack of social and physical presence in the design and interaction of sale. This stresses the need to understand the role, function, and power of the forestry organizations and sales processes in research on environmental and forest policy implementation on multiple levels

How Can Forest Management Adapt to Climate Change? : Possibilities in Different Forestry Systems

It is only relatively recently that national adaptation strategies have begun to develop measures by which forestry can adapt to climate change; often those measures opt to use a relatively general strategy for coping under conditions of disturbance. Particularly in states using intensive forest management, such as Sweden, this approach marks a departure from current strategies for achieving maximum yield. In other countries, however, where the economic output from forestry is less significant and interests such as biodiversity, local use and tourism, may figure more prominently, the conditions for developing risk-based forest management may be more manifest. This study reviews literature on adaptations in forest management, and analyzes country reports submitted as part of an EU27 project. The study concludes that the diverse prerequisites and policies of states have seldom been reflected in the design of adaptation management actions to date

Open Access and Sensitive Social Sciences Data in Different Legislative Contexts : The Case of Strategic Selection “Elite” Interviewing in Sweden

Open access has moved from the periphery to the mainstream in the last few years, and most recently there have been calls to make research data “accessible, useable and reusable”. While there are many good arguments for this development, including that it makes the research process more transparent and enables others to re-use the data collected, it also has negative implications for social science research in certain contexts. The case addressed here is “elite” interviewing in the context of conducting research in Sweden. In this case there is already a strong legislative focus on openness with implications for research ethics. This suggests that open data access implementation, particularly in the context of specific legislative frameworks, needs to be reviewed to ascertain ethically correct interviewee and research subject protection in the social sciences