A Map is More Than a Polygon: Contesting Green Infrastructure in Forested Landscapes in Sweden

TL;DR

This paper explores how mapping green infrastructure in Swedish forests creates conflicts due to differing views on what the maps represent and how they affect forest management.

Contribution

The study reveals how green infrastructure maps function as contested policy tools in forest governance under Sweden's liberal system.

Findings

Officials often see AHCV maps as purely scientific and objective, but stakeholders view them as influencing resource distribution.

Conflicts arise from differing knowledge perspectives, leading to adaptations or stagnation in environmental initiatives.

Green infrastructure maps are shown to be more than spatial tools—they shape governance and decision-making in forestry.

Abstract

Green infrastructure is a novel strategy for spatial prioritisation of forest conservation, where the elaboration of maps is of key importance. Sweden represents an interesting case, where planning for green infrastructure received special attention from governmental authorities. Under Sweden’s liberal forest governance, forest stakeholders (owners, companies and interest groups) acceptance is crucial for implementing novel instruments for landscape management, such as green infrastructure plans. Involving industrial and non-industrial private forest owners is, however, not a simple task. Based on 18 interviews with officials in charge of coordinating the plans at County Administrative Boards, our study aims to explore the challenges in mapping areas of high conservation values (AHCVs), how the coordinators understand the character of these maps as tools for environmental governance, and the resulting conflicts and hindrances to implementation of governmental objectives. Mandated by the Swedish government, green infrastructure plans were intended to gather knowledge, map AHCVs, and list actions to guide stakeholders on how to include green infrastructure in their forest management decisions. We examine how AHCV maps tended to be conceptualised by officials as solely the compilation of new knowledge, allegedly scientific and objective in its nature. However, there was also an acknowledgement that maps can indirectly affect resource distribution for nature conservation or limit forest owners’ decision space. Further, we explore how coordinators adapted to the opposition from forest stakeholders regarding the compilation of AHCV maps. Our discussion centres on how maps, often considered to be pure spatial knowledge, represent a soft policy instrument for environmental governance and resource prioritisation in forestry. Our study underscores how different departure points for knowledge create conflicts and subsequent adaptations in working strategies or stagnation of environmental initiatives.

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