The escaping holistic perspective in practical forest management

by Ida Wallin (Research Student at the Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, SLU)

Unravelling the complex reality and increasing human knowledge is the task given within science and research. Concrete answers to precise research questions are sought for and hopefully found. However, when it comes to answering the question about the over-all picture - the holistic perspective - we retreat to abstractions. Abstraction is a safe harbour for academics but often difficult to apply in practice. Ambitions to ”grasp it all” in practical forest management has given rise to several abstractions - concepts and tools – to be implemented with various success.

Factors that influence practical forest management are many and include social, technological, economical, ecological or political factors. In order to consider them all, many different concepts have been formulated and explored; ecosystem-services frameworks, landscape perspective, three pillars of sustainability, integrated forest management, model forests, biosphere areas, and surely there are many others. However, these are all concepts in need of explanation and clarification. Understanding just doesn’t come naturally to most of us and effective communication needs to be applied beforehand.

Communication is a crucial tool for any forest professional when implementing best practices in forest management. If you’re a forester, you might recollect one or two incidents when communication was not going your way. From experience of a case study in Southern Sweden I learnt many valuable lessons in communication. The best thing with forest owners from Göingebygden (an area in Southern Sweden that has been the border between Sweden and Denmark off and on during history) is that they will not let your faults go unnoticed and you will learn your lesson. You need to make yourself clearly understood.

After a similar encounter with forest stakeholders, a participant expressed great interest about socio-economic factors in the landscape. However, his conclusion was that the ”socio” part didn’t really matter in the end since ”economy is the only thing that strikes the deal”. Much would be easier if economic theory could merely put a monetary value on all the tangible and non-tangible goods and services that the forested landscape produces. Numbers and formulas are safe ground, not only for many scientists but for forest owners, economists and politicians alike. They all understand the language of “plus and minus”. However, understanding the world through mathematics has its limits as well and it is neither the final answer.

Reality and the pre-conditions for practical forest management also keep changing. Socially- we have globalisation as the dominating megatrend, politically -the governance structures are becoming more and more intricate, ecologically- climate change is expected to turn it all upside down. One should not even mention economics in this context. How will all this affect forest management? Where will these developments take us?

Foresight and scenario planning are research fields that try to explore the answers to such questions. Creating scenarios for alternative future developments is both an art and science which is best done together with other experts and practitioners. No one singlehandedly holds the truth about the future and there is no final answer to questions about the future. Nonetheless, the creative process of scenario planning prepares you for what might happen. Scenarios can provide you with a ”mirror” that reflects the direction and consequences of your actions. The forest owners and stakeholders taking part in our scenario planning workshops valued the new insights they acquired concerning their own forest management, but also the chance to discuss freely with each other about important issues. Together, researchers and practitioners, we at least felt closer to grasping it all after the workshop than we did before.

Maybe there is no final answer to how we can account for everything in forest management and achieve the holistic perspective. Resignation is perhaps close at hand and you might just want to close the door and concentrate on your precise research question or whatever you were up to before starting to read this blog post. Or you could just walk out of the door and take a stroll in the nearest forest. Out there you might get a better view, trying to see the forest for all its trees. You might get lost and find a new path and new perspectives. Where the new path takes you is unknown, but maybe on the way you will find a hill which will allow you to see the forest and all its trees… and possibly you will know what matters in the end.

Ida Wallin is a research student at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences within the field of forest management and planning. On a daily basis, Ida works to capture the landscape perspective and communicate it to practitioners and stakeholders. Privately, she is mostly trying to find a forest among all the agricultural fields outside Malmö City.
For questions contact Ida at: ida.wallin@slu.se