Managing uncertainty: Forest professionals’ claim and epistemic authority in the face of societal and climate change

Lidskog, Rolf; Löfmarck, Erik

doi:10.1057/rm.2015.10

Cited by 42 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In terms of adaptation measures, specific situations thus produce both a specific set of political spaces and policy tools that are interlinked within the context, and determine the logics that shape policy and adaptation processes: the aspects that are seen as manageable [38], negotiable [18,19] or practical in a logical sense [36] (e.g., replanting of spruce after a storm [12] or fast growing species [77,90]). This relationship emphasises the need to explore these issues on the contextual basis of different forestry structures and forest governance systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Adaptation to climate change in Swedish forests may be particularly complex given that many of the adaptation decisions will be made by private small-scale forest owners, often guided, through advisory systems, by forest companies, timber purchasing organisations (e.g., sawmills) and forest owners' associations [12,17,77] or, to some extent, by the Swedish Forest Agency [19]. Awareness and knowledge about adaptation to climate change in general and in forest management in particular is low among all groups of forest owners and forest professionals [19,21,77]. However, in some areas there is growing concern among forest owners, especially in relation to windthrow [17,22,23,79].…”

Section: Structural Positions and Adaptive Spaces Of Forest Ownersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adaptation to Climate Change in Forestry: A Perspective on Forest Ownership and Adaptation Responses

Andersson

Keskitalo

Lawrence

2017

Forests

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Adaptation to climate change has often been discussed from the perspectives of social vulnerability and community vulnerability, recognising that characteristics at local level will influence the particular adaptations undertaken. However, the extent to which national-level systemic factors influence and shape measures defined as adaptations has seldom been recognised. Focusing on adaptation to climate change in forestry, this study uses the example of two countries in the northern hemisphere with different forest ownership structures, forestry industry and traditions: Sweden, with strong private, non-industrial ownership, dominant forest industry and long forestry traditions; and Scotland, with forest ownership dominated by large estates and investment forestry based on plantations of exotic conifer species. The study shows how adaptation to climate change is structurally embedded and conditioned, which has resulted in specific challenges and constraints for different groups of forest owners within these two different contexts. This produces a specific set of political spaces and policy tools by rendering climate change in relation to forestry manageable, negotiable and practical/logical in specific ways. It is recommended that the focus of future work on climate-related issues and development of adaptation measures and policy should not be primarily on climate-related factors, but on institutional analysis of structural factors and logics in target sectors, in order to critically explore concepts of agency and power within these processes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Structural Positions and Adaptive Spaces Of Forest Ownersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation to Climate Change in Forestry: A Perspective on Forest Ownership and Adaptation Responses

Andersson

Keskitalo

Lawrence

2017

Forests

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“…In that sense, expertise is also characterized by having a jurisdiction: a particular field within which it has epistemic authority (Lidskog and Löfmarck 2015). Thus expertise is shaped by carving out and controlling a particular knowledge area and then asserting one's authority as a provider of relevant knowledge for problem-solving within this area.…”

Section: Theoretical Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing international experts: IPBES’s efforts to gain epistemic authority

Gustafsson

Lidskog

2018

Environmental Sociology

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What role do organizational preconditions play in the constitution of expertise? This is the guiding question for this paper, which studies how expertise is shaped in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). By organizing the world's experts on biodiversity, IPBES sets out to produce policy-relevant knowledge. However, in contrast to many other international expert bodies such as the IPCC, IPBES assesses not only scientific knowledge, but also other forms of knowledge, including indigenous and local knowledge. In light of IPBES's ambition to become an epistemic authority by synthesizing heterogeneous knowledge forms, it is of great interest to investigate how this expertise is constructed. What does 'expertise' mean for IPBES, and how are experts selected? Based on documents studies, this study explores the organizational structure through which IPBES assesses and selects experts. The analysis finds that the construction of expertise involves scientific as well as political dimensions. In the conclusions, problems are raised that are related to the outcome of this process and may threaten the epistemic authority of IPBES. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…To study risk governance in practice means bringing the practical and contextual reasoning of "street-level" risk managers (Corvellec 2009;Lidskog & Löfmarck 2015) -in this case forest professionals -to the fore. Their understanding of the extreme event -what kind of response it demands (based on their understanding of its causes and consequences) -is of central importance when investigating what action to take.…”

Section: Theoretical Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme events and climate change: the post-disaster dynamics of forest fires and forest storms in Sweden

Lidskog

Sjödin

2015

Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research

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How are extreme events understood in the forest sector? What are the implications of forest professionals' understandings and evaluations of extreme events? These questions are central to this study, which analyses the handling of the largest forest storm and the largest forest fire in modern Swedish history. The theoretical approach is that of risk governance in practice, which stresses that understanding the framings, practices and strategies used by members of professional organizations is pivotal for how disasters are managed. Two interview studies have been conducted with forest professionals involved in the two cases. The analysis shows that there were fundamentally different understandings of the two events and their implications for forestry practice. The storm was seen as an unavoidable natural disaster, but the consequences of future storms were considered possible to mitigate through changed forest practices. The forest fire, on the other hand, was conceptualized as a partly natural and partly man-made disaster, and forestry was seen as having very limited possibilities to reduce the likelihood as well as the consequences of similar events. The different understandings had significant implications for the post-disaster dynamics and for which management practices that were developed. Thus, understanding how extreme events are perceived is crucial to understanding which management practices that emerge in their wake, a topic of growing relevance because climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of forest fires and storms.ARTICLE HISTORY

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Managing uncertainty: Forest professionals’ claim and epistemic authority in the face of societal and climate change

Cited by 42 publications

References 33 publications

Adaptation to Climate Change in Forestry: A Perspective on Forest Ownership and Adaptation Responses

Adaptation to Climate Change in Forestry: A Perspective on Forest Ownership and Adaptation Responses

Organizing international experts: IPBES’s efforts to gain epistemic authority

Extreme events and climate change: the post-disaster dynamics of forest fires and forest storms in Sweden

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