Transformative change in context-stakeholders' understandings of leverage at the forest-climate nexus

Transformation acquires its meaning within contexts and particular settings where transformative change is experienced, and where people engage in meaning-making. We used the forest-climate nexus in Sweden as an empirical case study, and the leverage-points perspective as an analytical lens. The aim was to investigate contextual leverage for transformative change, and how our use of context and relations shapes our understanding of transformation and leverage for change. The empirical basis was a whole-day workshop, held in both northern and southern Sweden, for local forest stakeholders. To detract from current conflict and barriers to change, we asked the stakeholders to reflect on transformative change in the past and in the future, and the spatio-temporal relations that form the forest-climate nexus. Our analysis suggests that leverage associated with a transformative change in the future is commonly seen as universal and detached from context, reflecting, for example, national and global discourses on forests and climate change. Regarding transformative changes in the past, however, contextual leverage is linked to the community values and pluralism that drove the change in particular situations. Focusing on the complex spatio-temporal relations and meaning-making helps identify how leverage emerges from context, and how leverage also acquires a richer meaning for people experiencing transformative change

Bringing "Climate-Smart Forestry" Down to the Local Level-Identifying Barriers, Pathways and Indicators for Its Implementation in Practice

The theoretical concept of "climate-smart forestry" aims to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation to maintain and enhance forests' contributions to people and global agendas. We carried out two local transdisciplinary collaboration processes with the aim of developing local articulations of climate-smart forestry and to identify barriers, pathways and indicators to applying it in practice. During workshops in northern and southern Sweden, local stakeholders described how they would like forests to be managed, considering their past experiences, future visions and climate change. As a result, the stakeholders framed climate-smart forestry as active and diverse management towards multiple goals. They identified several conditions that could act both as barriers and pathways for its implementation in practice, such as value chains for forest products and services, local knowledge and experiences of different management alternatives, and the management of ungulates. Based on the workshop material, a total of 39 indicators for climate-smart forestry were identified, of which six were novel indicators adding to the existing literature. Our results emphasize the importance of understanding the local perspectives to promote climate-smart forestry practices across Europe. We also suggest how the concept of climate-smart forestry can be further developed, through the interplay between theory and practice

The shifting society syndrome: Values, baselines, and Swedish forest conservation in the 1930s and 2010s

This study addresses a response to shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), a syndrome implying that land managers' acceptance of environmental change declines gradually due to lack of historical knowledge. Some actions to counteract SBS are haunted by methodological problems associated with measuring natural states and ignoring societal effects on ideas of naturalness. To balance methodological discussions of SBS, this study analyzes the social contexts of baseline demarcations historically. It compares baselines in two Swedish forest conservation debates-about the Fiby forest in the 1930s and the Ojnare forest in the 2010s-focusing on scalable and unscalable values. To operationalize shifting societal criteria for baseline demarcations, we introduce the "shifting society syndrome" concept. The study identifies several societal shifts and shows that Fiby's baseline was shaped by the scalable value of age and the nonscalable values of uniqueness and Swedishness, and Ojnare's by the scalable value of biodiversity and the nonscalable values of uniqueness and wildness. We argue that values, scalability, and historical change are crucial variables in the practice of demarcating baselines and that intellectual history is a useful tool for methodological self-reflection in SBS research

The Recent Resurgence of Multiple-Use in the Swedish Forestry Discourse

Multiple-use forestry has gained increasing emphasis in forestry discourse in recent years. This article examines how multiple-use forestry has been perceived among Swedish forest actors. Halsey's interpretation on 'modalities of nature' is used to address the tension and relations among various actors and the unfolding processes of becoming. Drawn on semi-structured interviews, we suggest seeing multiple-use forestry as a site for ideas and ideologies to collide, confluence and collaborate. We draw attention to interview materials that address the 'modalities of nature' where vision, naming, speed and affect all contribute to the becoming of multiple-use forestry. We thus show how multiple-use forestry has been used as a political concept and address the potentially creative and constructive relations generated by the forest users

Continuity and change in forest restoration. A comparison of US ecology and forestry in the 1940s and 1990s

Previous research has paid little attention to the multiple meanings of the concept of forest restoration. To gain a more comprehensive view of forest restoration, this paper compares the US forest restoration debate of the 1940s and 1990s, in the disciplines of ecology and forestry. The paper focuses on historical approaches to pasts and futures, and on "sociotechnical imaginaries " providing societal legitimacy to restoration ventures. Historical scientific papers constitute the paper's empirical sources. The analysis shows that, among ecologists and foresters, forest restoration of the 1940s was oriented towards efficiency and challenges such as wood demands during World War II, whereas restoration of the 1990s was oriented towards conservation and environmental challenges. The approaches of the 1940s' ecologists and foresters seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to societal progress, whereas the approaches of their 1990s' counterparts seem motivated by a sociotechnical imaginary connecting forest restoration to the task of mitigating society's impacts. Based on the conclusions, it is argued that future research on forest restoration would benefit from comparing the idealized pasts of both yield-and conservation-oriented conceptions of forest restoration