Opportunities for Integrated Landscape Planning – the Broker, the Arena, the Tool

Abstract

As an integrated social and ecological system, the forest landscape includes multiple values. The need for a landscape approach in land use planning is being increasingly advocated in research, policy and practice. This paper explores how institutional conditions in the forest policy and management sector can be developed to meet demands for a multifunctional landscape perspective. Departing from obstacles recognised in collaborative planning literature, we build an analytical framework which is operationalised in a Swedish context at municipal level. Our case illustrating this is Vilhelmina Model Forest, where actual barriers and opportunities for a multiple-value landscape approach are identified through 32 semi-structured interviews displaying stakeholders' views on forest values, ownership rights and willingness to consider multiple values, forest policy and management premises, and collaboration. As an opportunity to overcome the barriers, we suggest and discuss three key components by which an integrated landscape planning approach could be realized in forest management planning: the need for a landscape coordinator (broker), the need for a collaborative forum (arena), and the development of the existing forest management plan into an advanced multifunctional landscape plan (tool).

Context-Based Spatial Decisions in Landscape-Ecological Planning

“…The proposed procedure deliberately concentrated on nature-based criteria and provided less details concerning communication with stakeholders and authorities since these issues is a constant focus in literature (Brandt et al 2000, Selman 2006, Sayer et al 2013, Carlsson et al 2017, Trovato and Ali 2019. Unlike most planning methodologies (Dramstad et al 1996, Izakovičova 2006, Özyavuz 2012, Turner and Gardner 2015, Serrano Gine 2018, Hersperger et al 2020 to make planning proposal we applied several theoretical models of landscape pattern depending on the objective.…”

Implementing Collaborative Planning in the Swedish Mountains – The Case of Vilhelmina

“…Collaborative, community-engaging processes for dialog, planning, negotiating and monitoring decisions and actions are vital to the development and subsequent implementation of a MCP-document. Involving citizens and stakeholders who play a role in (for example) land use, long-term planning, and management of natural resources represents a core principle in integrated landscape management [41]. Stakeholders in different sectors and at different levels must work together to coordinate actions, align goals, or reduce trade-offs, while simultaneously recognizing legitimate local, regional, national, and business interests.…”

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].…”