Real-world ecosystem management: Identifying knowledge gaps and overcoming societal barriers

Ecosystem services from urban forests: Urban and peri-urban forests provide multiple ecosystem services for city dwellers. We conducted an interdisciplinary assessment of ecosystem services of Oslomarka. Institutional, technological, and cultural changes were key contextual factors shaping current ecosystem services composition. Provisioning and habitat services have declined over the past fifty years, regulating have increased in supply. Our data suggest that cultural services also increased overall, but with major changes in their nature and composition. A biophysical assessment of trends, condition, and drivers of change of forest ecosystem services in Norway from 1950 to 2020: Industrial forestry, large scale measures of re- and afforestation, and infrastructure development have been main drivers of forest transformation. Deep transformations in the Norwegian economy shaped trends of forest ecosystem services over the study period. Forest management in Norway has largely favored provisioning services at the expense of supporting, cultural and regulating services. While Norwegian forests retain a strong capacity to deliver provisioning services, the overall ecological condition is relatively poor. Growth in forest area and biomass are insuf?cient indicators for sustainable forest management, and future forest polices would bene?t from improved knowledge on forests ecological condition, resilience against climate change, and contributions to human well-being. Segmented forest ontologies: Since the 1990s, biodiversity mapping has been a key government instrument for protecting threatened species and habitats in Norwegian productive forests. Having major political and practical implications, the methodologies of biodiversity mapping have been highly controversial. We identified two ontologies that were enacted through the methodologies, related to what we term the environmental and the forestry segments. Whereas mapping efforts associated with the environmental segment enacted a varied and complex forest ontology, approaches to mapping from the forestry segment enacted a simple and standardized forest ontology. We argue that the ontologies have different political implications, generally favoring the actors that support them. On a more general level, we show that ontological politics are expressed through enactment of different ontologies. Ecosystem-level management: The concept can be taken to mean adapting management to structures, functions, and natural processes in forest ecosystems. To clarify what international conventions and organizations mean when they use the term, we have reviewed seven crucial documents from e.g., the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Sustainable Development Goals for Life on Land, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the EU Forest Strategy for 2030. This may be grouped into ten more or less distinctive topics, e.g., this core requirement: Maintain the structure and biodiversity of ecosystems, and if needed improve their structure and biodiversity as well as prevent loss of biodiversity. One way to decide if forest management fulfill such requirements is to showcase how the structure, functions and dynamics in ecosystems align with or depart from similar conditions in natural forests. Our assessment is that current forest management to a considerable degree deviates from ecosystem-based management. Forest legislation: Forestry in Norway is regulated by the Forestry Act, which is a production law with few and vague environmental provisions. The act’s sustainability regulations lean upon private certification schemes, on which environmental authorities have no influence. Norway’s Biodiversity Act has an unclear standing related to forestry. We argue that forestry activity with significant environmental impact should have been subject to impact assessment due to EEA requirements, but this has never happened. There is a need for a thorough review of the legislation applicable to Norwegian forestry, which is subject to less regulation than any other industry. Three master theses connected to ECOREAL have been submitted in 2022. Outreach: A scientific workshop was held in May 2021 (digital). “Forest ecosystem services in Norway: trends, state, and drivers of change 1950-2020”. 25 participants from Norwegian research institutions. An open webinar on forestry, biodiversity and carbon was held in June 2021. This was a collaboration between four RCN-funded projects: ECOREAL, EcoForest, BioEssHealth and ForBioFunCtioN. In May 2022 we hosted the first stakeholder forum, focused on constraints and possibilities for alternative forestry practices. There was broad participation from forestry, management, research, and NGOs. The forum was quite successful, and a detailed report has been published. We aim to host a similar event in the spring 2023, in addition to a somewhat larger closing conference in late 2023.

The ecosystem perspective is present in national legislation and in international conventions, but the state of many ecosystems is poor. In order to understand why this is so, and to move forward, we must identify barriers in the current management regime. That is the task of this interdisciplinary research project. Taking Norwegian forests as the case in point, the project will identify knowledge gaps and missing and incomplete tools pertaining to ecosystem-based management (EBM). It will identify societal barriers to meaningful EBM through a study of the current management system and the social field of forestry. Potential barriers are broken down into categories reflected in the project’s work packages: WP 1 deals with the ecological knowledge that is required to implement EBM. What knowledge gaps exist? Is existing knowledge operationalized and meditated efficiently? WP 2 deals with the legal framework that regulates forestry, including the relationship between law and private certification. Does this system facilitate EBM? WP 3 addresses power relations in the social field of forestry. This requires identification of key actors (not only those with formal roles in management), and the power relation between them. Do certain interests dominate the field, and what are the consequences for EBM? WP 4 will study how “technologies of government” and the application (and contestation) of scientific knowledge shape the field of forestry and determine concrete outcomes. WP 5 sets out to map the economic instruments that are operative in the forest sector, and determine how they affect the working of the forest industry. What does this mean for implementation of EBM? WP 6 is dedicated to integration: Here we will draw together the threads form the WPs, and develop policy recommendations that build on findings from this diverse, interdisciplinary research effort. An international scientific advisory (ISAG) group will be established, and it will meet regularly online with the project team. A stakeholder forum will be established, and it will meet for a two-day conference in 2022, or possibly two one-day meetings in 2022 and 2023. ISAG will be present at one meeting. Here, we will apply Q-methodology and systematic scoping in order to identify different positions on forestry issues, and thus also paths to common ground. Webinars with other forest research projects will be hosted, starting June 2021. PhD workshops with a variety of researchers will be hosted, starting May 2021.