This article focuses on the dioxin problem of Baltic herring and salmon fisheries and its governa... more This article focuses on the dioxin problem of Baltic herring and salmon fisheries and its governance that is based on natural scientific knowledge. The dioxin problem weakens the perceived quality of Baltic salmon and herring as food and affects the way the catches can be used. This influences negatively the fishing livelihood, the coastal culture, and the availability of the fish for consumers. We explored how the governance of the dioxin problem could be improved, to better address its socioeconomic and cultural implications. We identified four main actions: (1) adopt environmental, economic and social sustainability, and food security and safety as shared principles between the environmental, food safety/public health, and fisheries policies, (2) establish collaboration between the environmental, public health, and fisheries sectors at the regional level, (3) enhance interaction around the dioxin problem within the fisheries sector, and (4) support the participation of the Baltic fisheries stakeholders in the EU-level food safety governance. Viewing dioxins in fish not only as a natural scientific problem but as a multidimensional one would enable a wider toolbox of governing instruments to be developed to better address the different dimensions. This would support steps towards collaborative governance and a food system approach.
Achieving social equity among local stakeholders should be a key objective for eco-system servic... more Achieving social equity among local stakeholders should be a key objective for eco-system service (ES) governance in Europe’s ecologically fragile treeline areas. The ES literature tends to be biased towards distributional equity and market-based instruments when assessing social equity of ES governance. In this study, we analyze a wide range of social equity procedures that have been applied in Europe, using 11 synthesized case studies of governance-related chal- lenges and 75 proposals for governance enhancement from 8 European countries provided by researchers with expertise on treeline area governance. The proposals were grouped by inductive clustering into 10 procedural or distributional equity-related policy recommendations: (1) increase stakeholder collaboration, (2) balance interactions between horizontal and vertical governance lev- els, (3) increase ES education, (4) use science to guide decisions, (5) start collaboration at an early stage, (6) enhance transparency, (7) aim to mitigate negative impacts, (8) use an ES approach to identify synergistic goals for governance, (9) enhance balanced multi-functional land use, and (10) use market-based instruments to balance benefits and costs deriving from governance decisions. Finally, we discuss 5 more general proposals on how regulatory and market-based approaches could be linked to enhance both procedural and distributional equity of treeline area governance.
ABSTRACT Credibility, relevance and legitimacy (CRELE) of knowledge are widely recognized as key ... more ABSTRACT Credibility, relevance and legitimacy (CRELE) of knowledge are widely recognized as key attributes of effective science–policy interfaces (SPIs). Yet, notwithstanding efforts to enhance the CRELE attributes of an SPI, it may still lack impact or be dismissed as not being credible, legitimate or relevant both inside, and outside the SPI. We introduce ‘iterativity’ as an additional attribute to the CRELE framework to better capture dynamic, continuous and multi-directional interactions between science, policy and society related to SPIs. Iterativity is understood in the context of an important shift in perspective by which SPIs are viewed as dynamic, evolving processes rather than linear processes or isolated events. Based on empirical material on biodiversity-related SPIs, we identify 14 features and lessons learned that explain the outcomes of SPIs regarding their participants and external audiences, and examine how SPIs’ structures, objectives, processes and outputs help to build CRELE and iterativity (CRELE + IT). The four attributes of CRELE + IT and results related to the features explaining outcomes of SPIs also provide useful practical tools for the design, implementation and revision of effective science–policy interfaces. These lessons regarding CRELE + IT help us understand both when and why SPIs are able to contribute to the pressing social and ecological need to halt biodiversity loss and the further deterioration of ecosystem services.
ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. T... more ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. There is a need to explore whether a well-designed process can contribute to a legitimate decision ‘closure’ even in the presence of value conflicts. We examine why environmentalists did not accept a compromise between industrial forestry and full conservation in the case of some forestry debates in Northern Finland and the Liperinsuo site in particular. Contradictory value positions between the environmentalists and the Finnish state forestry enterprise can only partly explain the lack of legitimacy, because past decision-making processes form specific legacies affecting even the legitimacy of current decisions and compromises. By exploring the continuum of decision-making processes from the point of view of ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’, we identify some conditions for processes contributing to legitimate decision ‘closures’, including: 1) the inclusion of all the relevant participants, 2) the problems which the decision should solve are co-defined and mutually agreed on; 3) the timing of the necessary ‘closing down’ of the decision is mutually agreed on; 4) the processes are transparent, and 5) the decision ‘closures’ are not transformed from one scale to another without possibilities for participation. By nurturing these conditions through deliberate process design, our capacity to legitimately ‘close down’ decisions in order to resolve complex and value-laden environmental conflicts will increase.
National parks have become important tourist attractions and tools for regional development. New ... more National parks have become important tourist attractions and tools for regional development. New international initiatives, such as PAN (Protected Area Network) Parks in Europe, now promote sustainable tourism in protected areas. This paper examines the sociocultural sustainability of tourism perceived by local stakeholders of Oulanka National Park in northeastern Finland. The central question concerns the role of PAN Parks certification in community and tourism development. Four discourses were identified, based on 40 semi-structured interviews exploring different views on sociocultural development pertaining to tourism in the national park: (1) integrating nature-based tourism and conservation, (2) defending the rights of local people, (3) stressing the economic utilization of nature and (4) accepting tourism development and the national park. Although local stakeholders mostly have a positive perception of tourism in the park, it cannot be concluded whether the park facilitates development in a sustainable manner or not. Key problems identified are lack of participation opportunities and contradictions with traditional subsistence economies. The various positions of stakeholders in these discourses tend to influence their views on sustainability. Findings imply the necessity to monitor the distribution of benefits and burdens of park development holistically to multiple stakeholders.
ABSTRACT Preserving biodiversity and establishing healthy and thriving populations of predator an... more ABSTRACT Preserving biodiversity and establishing healthy and thriving populations of predator animals are the expressed aims of many wildlife and ecosystem conservation projects and initiatives. However, such conservation strategies are often in conflict with the traditions, practices and land-use priorities of local communities. This article concentrates on the situation concerning the predation of reindeer (mainly by wolves) in Finland's southeast reindeer herding area and its immediate vicinity, but makes reference to the broader situation of predation and reindeer herding in Finland. Based on analysis of statistics and interviews with local stakeholders, the research findings refer to the intermingled contradictions related to conceptual, statistical and other management relevant knowledge and resulting problems, for example, in conservation hunting licensing. The article concludes that the wolf comprises a complex case for nature conservation initiatives and sustainable reindeer husbandry and that, in practice, it has particular implications compared to other policy approaches to dealing with the problem of animal predators. The article ends with some theoretical considerations as to whether we can improve our understanding of modern human-environment relations by deriving ideas from the actor-network theory debates.
ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. T... more ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. There is a need to explore whether a well-designed process can contribute to a legitimate decision ‘closure’ even in the presence of value conflicts. We examine why environmentalists did not accept a compromise between industrial forestry and full conservation in the case of some forestry debates in Northern Finland and the Liperinsuo site in particular. Contradictory value positions between the environmentalists and the Finnish state forestry enterprise can only partly explain the lack of legitimacy, because past decision-making processes form specific legacies affecting even the legitimacy of current decisions and compromises. By exploring the continuum of decision-making processes from the point of view of ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’, we identify some conditions for processes contributing to legitimate decision ‘closures’, including: 1) the inclusion of all the relevant participants, 2) the problems which the decision should solve are co-defined and mutually agreed on; 3) the timing of the necessary ‘closing down’ of the decision is mutually agreed on; 4) the processes are transparent, and 5) the decision ‘closures’ are not transformed from one scale to another without possibilities for participation. By nurturing these conditions through deliberate process design, our capacity to legitimately ‘close down’ decisions in order to resolve complex and value-laden environmental conflicts will increase.
This article focuses on the dioxin problem of Baltic herring and salmon fisheries and its governa... more This article focuses on the dioxin problem of Baltic herring and salmon fisheries and its governance that is based on natural scientific knowledge. The dioxin problem weakens the perceived quality of Baltic salmon and herring as food and affects the way the catches can be used. This influences negatively the fishing livelihood, the coastal culture, and the availability of the fish for consumers. We explored how the governance of the dioxin problem could be improved, to better address its socioeconomic and cultural implications. We identified four main actions: (1) adopt environmental, economic and social sustainability, and food security and safety as shared principles between the environmental, food safety/public health, and fisheries policies, (2) establish collaboration between the environmental, public health, and fisheries sectors at the regional level, (3) enhance interaction around the dioxin problem within the fisheries sector, and (4) support the participation of the Baltic fisheries stakeholders in the EU-level food safety governance. Viewing dioxins in fish not only as a natural scientific problem but as a multidimensional one would enable a wider toolbox of governing instruments to be developed to better address the different dimensions. This would support steps towards collaborative governance and a food system approach.
Achieving social equity among local stakeholders should be a key objective for eco-system servic... more Achieving social equity among local stakeholders should be a key objective for eco-system service (ES) governance in Europe’s ecologically fragile treeline areas. The ES literature tends to be biased towards distributional equity and market-based instruments when assessing social equity of ES governance. In this study, we analyze a wide range of social equity procedures that have been applied in Europe, using 11 synthesized case studies of governance-related chal- lenges and 75 proposals for governance enhancement from 8 European countries provided by researchers with expertise on treeline area governance. The proposals were grouped by inductive clustering into 10 procedural or distributional equity-related policy recommendations: (1) increase stakeholder collaboration, (2) balance interactions between horizontal and vertical governance lev- els, (3) increase ES education, (4) use science to guide decisions, (5) start collaboration at an early stage, (6) enhance transparency, (7) aim to mitigate negative impacts, (8) use an ES approach to identify synergistic goals for governance, (9) enhance balanced multi-functional land use, and (10) use market-based instruments to balance benefits and costs deriving from governance decisions. Finally, we discuss 5 more general proposals on how regulatory and market-based approaches could be linked to enhance both procedural and distributional equity of treeline area governance.
ABSTRACT Credibility, relevance and legitimacy (CRELE) of knowledge are widely recognized as key ... more ABSTRACT Credibility, relevance and legitimacy (CRELE) of knowledge are widely recognized as key attributes of effective science–policy interfaces (SPIs). Yet, notwithstanding efforts to enhance the CRELE attributes of an SPI, it may still lack impact or be dismissed as not being credible, legitimate or relevant both inside, and outside the SPI. We introduce ‘iterativity’ as an additional attribute to the CRELE framework to better capture dynamic, continuous and multi-directional interactions between science, policy and society related to SPIs. Iterativity is understood in the context of an important shift in perspective by which SPIs are viewed as dynamic, evolving processes rather than linear processes or isolated events. Based on empirical material on biodiversity-related SPIs, we identify 14 features and lessons learned that explain the outcomes of SPIs regarding their participants and external audiences, and examine how SPIs’ structures, objectives, processes and outputs help to build CRELE and iterativity (CRELE + IT). The four attributes of CRELE + IT and results related to the features explaining outcomes of SPIs also provide useful practical tools for the design, implementation and revision of effective science–policy interfaces. These lessons regarding CRELE + IT help us understand both when and why SPIs are able to contribute to the pressing social and ecological need to halt biodiversity loss and the further deterioration of ecosystem services.
ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. T... more ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. There is a need to explore whether a well-designed process can contribute to a legitimate decision ‘closure’ even in the presence of value conflicts. We examine why environmentalists did not accept a compromise between industrial forestry and full conservation in the case of some forestry debates in Northern Finland and the Liperinsuo site in particular. Contradictory value positions between the environmentalists and the Finnish state forestry enterprise can only partly explain the lack of legitimacy, because past decision-making processes form specific legacies affecting even the legitimacy of current decisions and compromises. By exploring the continuum of decision-making processes from the point of view of ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’, we identify some conditions for processes contributing to legitimate decision ‘closures’, including: 1) the inclusion of all the relevant participants, 2) the problems which the decision should solve are co-defined and mutually agreed on; 3) the timing of the necessary ‘closing down’ of the decision is mutually agreed on; 4) the processes are transparent, and 5) the decision ‘closures’ are not transformed from one scale to another without possibilities for participation. By nurturing these conditions through deliberate process design, our capacity to legitimately ‘close down’ decisions in order to resolve complex and value-laden environmental conflicts will increase.
National parks have become important tourist attractions and tools for regional development. New ... more National parks have become important tourist attractions and tools for regional development. New international initiatives, such as PAN (Protected Area Network) Parks in Europe, now promote sustainable tourism in protected areas. This paper examines the sociocultural sustainability of tourism perceived by local stakeholders of Oulanka National Park in northeastern Finland. The central question concerns the role of PAN Parks certification in community and tourism development. Four discourses were identified, based on 40 semi-structured interviews exploring different views on sociocultural development pertaining to tourism in the national park: (1) integrating nature-based tourism and conservation, (2) defending the rights of local people, (3) stressing the economic utilization of nature and (4) accepting tourism development and the national park. Although local stakeholders mostly have a positive perception of tourism in the park, it cannot be concluded whether the park facilitates development in a sustainable manner or not. Key problems identified are lack of participation opportunities and contradictions with traditional subsistence economies. The various positions of stakeholders in these discourses tend to influence their views on sustainability. Findings imply the necessity to monitor the distribution of benefits and burdens of park development holistically to multiple stakeholders.
ABSTRACT Preserving biodiversity and establishing healthy and thriving populations of predator an... more ABSTRACT Preserving biodiversity and establishing healthy and thriving populations of predator animals are the expressed aims of many wildlife and ecosystem conservation projects and initiatives. However, such conservation strategies are often in conflict with the traditions, practices and land-use priorities of local communities. This article concentrates on the situation concerning the predation of reindeer (mainly by wolves) in Finland's southeast reindeer herding area and its immediate vicinity, but makes reference to the broader situation of predation and reindeer herding in Finland. Based on analysis of statistics and interviews with local stakeholders, the research findings refer to the intermingled contradictions related to conceptual, statistical and other management relevant knowledge and resulting problems, for example, in conservation hunting licensing. The article concludes that the wolf comprises a complex case for nature conservation initiatives and sustainable reindeer husbandry and that, in practice, it has particular implications compared to other policy approaches to dealing with the problem of animal predators. The article ends with some theoretical considerations as to whether we can improve our understanding of modern human-environment relations by deriving ideas from the actor-network theory debates.
ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. T... more ABSTRACT Environmental problems are often complex and involve fundamental value contradictions. There is a need to explore whether a well-designed process can contribute to a legitimate decision ‘closure’ even in the presence of value conflicts. We examine why environmentalists did not accept a compromise between industrial forestry and full conservation in the case of some forestry debates in Northern Finland and the Liperinsuo site in particular. Contradictory value positions between the environmentalists and the Finnish state forestry enterprise can only partly explain the lack of legitimacy, because past decision-making processes form specific legacies affecting even the legitimacy of current decisions and compromises. By exploring the continuum of decision-making processes from the point of view of ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’, we identify some conditions for processes contributing to legitimate decision ‘closures’, including: 1) the inclusion of all the relevant participants, 2) the problems which the decision should solve are co-defined and mutually agreed on; 3) the timing of the necessary ‘closing down’ of the decision is mutually agreed on; 4) the processes are transparent, and 5) the decision ‘closures’ are not transformed from one scale to another without possibilities for participation. By nurturing these conditions through deliberate process design, our capacity to legitimately ‘close down’ decisions in order to resolve complex and value-laden environmental conflicts will increase.
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Papers by Simo Sarkki
lenges and 75 proposals for governance enhancement from 8 European countries provided by
researchers with expertise on treeline area governance. The proposals were grouped by inductive
clustering into 10 procedural or distributional equity-related policy recommendations: (1) increase
stakeholder collaboration, (2) balance interactions between horizontal and vertical governance lev-
els, (3) increase ES education, (4) use science to guide decisions, (5) start collaboration at an early
stage, (6) enhance transparency, (7) aim to mitigate negative impacts, (8) use an ES approach to
identify synergistic goals for governance, (9) enhance balanced multi-functional land use, and (10)
use market-based instruments to balance benefits and costs deriving from governance decisions.
Finally, we discuss 5 more general proposals on how regulatory and market-based approaches could be linked to enhance both procedural and distributional equity of treeline area governance.
lenges and 75 proposals for governance enhancement from 8 European countries provided by
researchers with expertise on treeline area governance. The proposals were grouped by inductive
clustering into 10 procedural or distributional equity-related policy recommendations: (1) increase
stakeholder collaboration, (2) balance interactions between horizontal and vertical governance lev-
els, (3) increase ES education, (4) use science to guide decisions, (5) start collaboration at an early
stage, (6) enhance transparency, (7) aim to mitigate negative impacts, (8) use an ES approach to
identify synergistic goals for governance, (9) enhance balanced multi-functional land use, and (10)
use market-based instruments to balance benefits and costs deriving from governance decisions.
Finally, we discuss 5 more general proposals on how regulatory and market-based approaches could be linked to enhance both procedural and distributional equity of treeline area governance.