Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6459810 | Forest Policy and Economics | 2016 | 16 Pages |
â¢Local stakeholders and national policy-makers envisioning forested landscapesâ¢Applied future-oriented participatory action research in a Swedish forest contextâ¢Used criteria of communicative action and institutionalisation for evaluationâ¢Successful facilitation of constructive discussion about common future landscapeâ¢Described difficulties in institutionalising outcomes from participatory processes
Governance of forested landscapes must account for multiple interests and perspectives through public and stakeholder participation. In the context of Swedish forestry, participation has mainly been implemented as a top-down venture, without adequate integration of all interests. Linking local interests to national policy-making through participatory action research and future-oriented methodologies has not yet been tried in Sweden. We develop and implement a participatory action research model with the objectives to (i) facilitate a discussion among local stakeholders about their common future in relation to their forested landscapes and, (ii) to connect the local level with the national, institutional level. First, local stakeholders are brought together to create commonly desired visions in case studies of two forested landscapes in Sweden. Second, national policy-makers are engaged in a discussion on how to achieve the locally-desired visions. The ability of the two-step participatory action research model to achieve these objectives is then evaluated based on norms of Communicative Action and criteria of participatory planning. The results demonstrate the positive opportunity to engage local stakeholders in a constructive discussion about their common future, but also show some practical constraints of participatory methods, in particular the risk of institutional authorities disregarding local knowledge and claims.