Shadow forests – Re-thinking dominant forest cultures in times of emergency

In the light of the intersecting climate and biodiversity emergencies, adoption of integrated and transformative land use approaches is urgently needed.

However, in Sweden, where clear-cut forest management is the dominant practice, the calls for transformative land use challenge established meanings, norms, and identities.

More empirical research is thus needed on the politics of forest management, and the socio-cultural structures that impede or enable transformative forest management.

The Shadow Forests project addresses this knowledge gap and aims to (1) create a better understanding of the sociocultural challenges and opportunities associated with transformative forest management, and (2) develop recommendations for more legitimate and socially just processes of change.

The research team brings together different strands of social science literature to provide an in-depth analysis of how dominant ways of seeing, knowing and managing Swedish forests are being challenged, defended, and altered as transformative forest management is imagined, narrated and acted upon.

Building on collaborative research methods involving close cooperation with three practitioner groups identified as possible change agents (young foresters, forest innovators, forest journalists), the project will provide a detailed analysis of how resistance to change can be constructively dealt with, power imbalances altered, and transformative forest management practices cultivated in different contexts.