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Between protocol and reality: Swedish municipal comprehensive planning. Spatial planning using a landscape approach has been recognized as being essential for reconciling ecological, cultural and socioeconomic dimensions in sustainable development (SuD). Although embraced as a concept, there is a lack of planning tools capable of incorporating multi-level, multifunctional and multi-sectoral perspectives, especially in a rural context. The departure point in this paper is the legal requirements for municipal comprehensive planning (MCP) in Sweden and an e-mail survey about incentives, stakeholder involvement, policy integration and implementation in MCP in all 15 Swedish mountain municipalities. The purpose of this explorative study is to examine whether MCP could be a tool in planning for SuD. Results indicate a general lack of resources and a low status of MCP that affect, and even limit, stakeholder involvement, policy integration and implementation. However, legal requirements for MCP are targeted at SuD, and municipal personnel responsible for planning appreciate the potential of MCP. Therefore, there is potential to develop the MCP into an effective landscape planning tool. To accomplish this, the status of an active planning process has to be raised, the mandate of the local planning agency has to be secured, and residents and land users have to be involved throughout the planning process. European Planning StudiesARTICLE HISTORY

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This study examines which kinds of social benefits derived from forests are emphasised by Swedish stakeholders and what governance modes and management tools they accept. Our study shows that there exists a great variety among stakeholders’ perceptions of forests’ social values, where tourism and recreation is the most common reference. There are also differences in preferred governance modes and management where biomass and bioenergy sectors advocate business as usual (i.e. framework regulations and voluntarism) and other stakeholders demand rigid tools (i.e. coercion and targeting) and improved landscape planning. This divide will have implications for future policy orientations and require deliberative policy processes and improved dialogue among stakeholders and authorities. We suggest that there is a potential for these improvements, since actors from almost all stakeholder groups support local influence on governance and management, acknowledged and maintained either by the authorities, i.e. targeting, or by the stakeholders themselves, i.e. voluntarism.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0745-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.

Forests are considered crucial assets for sustainable rural development, and contemporary forestry is an industry where production, environmental and social goals can-and should-be handled simultaneously. Swedish family forest owners (FFOs) are expected to both manage and conserve their forests for the benefit of the whole country, but there are contradictions between development and conservation and between traditional and alternative forms of utilization representing dilemmas in rural areas. Tensions between urban and rural areas, between demands on what to produce and protect, are often linked to the FFOs' views on opportunities for forest management. The aim of this study is to identify and analyse the extent to which FFOs perceive that social values have the ability to generate "new" goods and services as a supplement or alternative to traditional forestry, and to suggest how the forests might be managed to render high social values. Fiftyseven interviews were conducted with FFOs (both resident and non-resident). The results indicate that regardless of where they reside, FFOs have a multifunctional view of their forests and forest management, that the social values attached to forests can play an important role in development of local recreation-and forestbased tourism activities, and in this respect they can enhance sustainable rural Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-017-9379-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. development. It is, however, not obvious who might start and develop these businesses, since there seems to be a lack of interest among the FFOs themselves.