De-Polarizing Land Use Conflicts in Sweden. A Multi-level Governance Perspective

The Pufendorf Advanced Study Group seeks to provide a novel approach to understanding and addressing conflicts over land-use practices in Sweden. We believe such a novel approach is warranted as future research needs to direct greater attention to two major aspects of these conflicts. First, land-use conflicts in Sweden have been increasingly marked by a polarization between actor groups and their respective values and perspectives. This concerns, to name some examples, conflicts over the industrial Swedish forestry model, the environmental benefits of organic farming, the exploitation of arable land for urban planning or solar parks. The polarization surrounding these and other questions has also impacted the role of researchers, with emerging or intensifying fault lines within the scholarly community on land-use conflicts. Second, land-use conflicts in Sweden are strongly embedded in multi-level governance settings. A proper understanding of the drivers and mechanisms of these (polarized) conflicts, along with possible responses to them, needs to incorporate the dynamics between international, national and local actors and processes.
Against this backdrop, our inter-disciplinary ASG of biologists, ecologists, economists, human and physical geographers, and political scientists seeks to combine its varied expertise on land use conflicts:
(1) to establish a targeted research platform on land-use conflicts that channels the varied expertise and resources at Lund University on this urgent issue - and disseminates its findings through a conceptual paper and final workshop;
(2) to develop a novel and interdisciplinary analytical framework to better understand and address land-use conflicts in Sweden; and
(3) to conduct a first exploratory application of this framework to the critical case of Swedish unprotected old-growth forests.

Vi bevittnar konflikter kring markanvändningspraktiker i Sverige i ett antal känsliga ämnen, t.ex. på svenska skogsbruksmodellen eller miljövinsterna med ekologiskt jordbruk. Dessa konflikter präglas av en ökande polarisering bland aktörsgrupper. Syftet med denna ASG är att bygga en forskningsplattform som förenar den mångsidiga kompetensen vid Lunds universitet i denna angelägna fråga. Gruppen ska utveckla ett nytt analytiskt tillvägagångssätt för att bättre förstå markanvändningskonflikter i Sverige och hur man kan hantera dem både internationellt och nationellt. Vi kommer att tillämpa detta synsätt på det kritiska fallet med svensk oskyddad gammelskog.