Drivers for Public–Private Partnerships in Sustainable Natural Resource Management—Lessons from the Swedish Mountain Region

Abstract

Sweden’s mountain areas are sensitive ecosystems that are used by a wide range of stakeholders, and this raises multiple sustainability concerns. Collaborative governance solutions are becoming increasingly common in such situations to promote more sustainable practices. While the Swedish mountain area is indeed a hot spot for different forms of public–private partnerships (PPPs) related to natural resources management, as yet, little is known about the shaping of participation, leadership, and implementation of these processes. What are the drivers for implementing collaborative environmental partnerships, do the drivers differ, and if so, how? What role does the specific context play in the design of these PPPs? Are the PPPs useful, and if so, for what? To analyze those issues, we conducted 38 semi-structured interviews with project leaders from a sample randomly selected from a database of 245 public–private collaborative projects in the Swedish mountains. Our results indicate that consequential incentives in the form of funding and previous successful collaborations seem to be the major drivers for such partnerships. A critical discussion of the possibilities and limitations of public–private forms of governance in rural mountain areas adds to the ongoing debate on the performance of environmental PPPs in a regional context.

Education for Sustainable Development: Emerging Themes from Adopters of a Declaration

“…The research design involved a subjective ontology in a qualitative, interpretive epistemological framework. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews garnered empirical data consistent with other qualitative studies in the sustainability literature [35,36]. Based upon the review of signatory websites in Australia, the elements of the Declaration the signified universities are choosing to highlight were identified, which were used to design a semi-structured interview template.…”

European Union’s Last Intact Forest Landscapes are at A Value Chain Crossroad between Multiple Use and Intensified Wood Production

“…This calls for spatial comprehensive planning with higher ambition levels of biodiversity conservation and landscape-level spatial planning that simultaneously considers all aspects of using forestland, including economic and immaterial values such as aesthetics and sense of wilderness [78]. The 15 mountain municipalities of NW Sweden have key but difficult role in exercising their landscape planning mandate [26][27][28][29].…”

“…The second is an increased focus on conservation of the Swedish mountain forests as a "green belt" [24] and mainland for developing forest value chains based on multiple values linked to biodiversity, long-term carbon sequestration, wilderness, reindeer husbandry and amenity values. This latter trajectory is based on formal protection, voluntary set asides, and small-scale continuous cover forestry, and requires effective spatial and comprehensive landscape and land use planning, e.g., [25][26][27][28]. Given the severe rural development challenges in the hinterland forest and mountain municipalities [28,29] harboring the European Union's last intact forest landscapes, we argue in favor of holistic analyses of the landscape transformation consequences of these trajectories, see also [30][31][32].…”

Contrasting views on co-management of indigenous natural and cultural heritage – Case of Laponia World Heritage site, Sweden

“…property rights and the public interest (Pettersson et al, 2017;Stjernström, Pettersson, & Karlsson, 2018;Thellbro, Bjärstig, & Eckerberg, 2018).…”