Feeling at Home from A Distance? : How Geographical Distance and Non-Residency Shape Sense of Place among Private Forest Owners

Out-migration from rural areas and generational shifts create conditions whereby increasing numbers of private forest owners live at a distance from their forestland. Geographical distance and non-residency have been raised as issues that may possibly weaken these owners’ relationships with their properties. Drawing on the “sense of place” concept as a frame of analysis for 51 qualitative interviews with resident and nonresident private forest owners from two areas in Sweden, this study provides in-depth understanding of how geographical distance and place of residency shape owners’ feelings about their forest properties. The study shows that sense of place is constructed in complex and multifaceted ways over time and that social and historical contexts and processes beyond the forest environment can make owners feel closeness to their distant properties. Thus, geographical distance or residency alone does not explain variations in these forest owners’ feelings of distance or closeness to their properties

In the eye of the storm : adaptation logics of forest owners in management and planning in Swedish areas

With a changing climate, storm and wind throw is becoming an increasing risk to forest. However, Swedish forest management practices have so far involved relatively little consideration of adaptation to climate change. This study examined resistance and alternatives to business as usual forest management, drawing upon material obtained in interviews with individual forest owners who spontaneously identified and discussed storm and wind throw as a risk to their forest. They thereby expressed a logic differing from that of the forest industry in Sweden, which has largely normalised storm risk rather than considering it in climate change adaptation work. The present analysis illustrates the broad and largely concerned position of individual forest owners, in contrast with a more established industry position on storm as an accepted and existing risk. Overall, the study highlights the diversity, agency and power relations within Swedish forestry and the forested landscape - aspects that are vital to better understanding processes relevant to forest and climate change adaptation

Forest social values : the case of Dalasjo, Sweden

Forest social values has been put forward as an umbrella term for a new and less material relationship between people and the forested landscape, a relationship that more recently has become a policy issue. In this case study we explore how forest-related values are conceptualised in the case of Dalasjo, in Vilhelmina, Sweden, where a recent process involving determining protection for social values took place in relation to, and simultaneous with, governmental considerations regarding the application of a social values concept. By means of focus group and key informant interviews, the study demonstrates that forest social values are not only about forest per se, or even the physical and user values per se. Further, the diverse but still general understanding of forest social values on a policy level is demonstrated. This stands in contrast to the specific and place-based understanding of the local community, emanating from both individual and collective experiences. Thus, it is concluded that a policy use of social values terms, which may be difficult to identify from the outside, makes the definition of values in specific land use conflicts more complex rather than offering a possibility to immediately provide clear basis for planning tools