Participatory forest planning using MCDA in northern Sweden

General case description

Brief overview

Lycksele is the main town of the Lycksele municipality in the county of Västerbotten in northern Sweden. The town Lycksele is the regional center in a forest landscape area where commercial forestry is an important industry for the local economy. In addition, the forest is important to the inhabitants for purposes other than timber production, e.g. for the reindeer herding industry, for preserving biodiversity, and for recreation, hunting, and fishing opportunities. These diverse interests in the forest are a potential source of conflict and the planning situation is further complicated by the fact that there are several owners: the Lycksele municipality, three commercial forest companies, the Church of Sweden, and a number of nonindustrial private forest owners. To address these problems, a participatory planning process was initiated by the municipality and supported by the forest owning companies and the Church of Sweden. The main objective of the participatory planning process in Lycksele was to produce a multiple-use forest management plan. The plan was to be a strategic forest management plan including timber production as well as other uses of the forest in a total area of ca 9 000 ha of productive forest around the town of Lycksele.

Organization

The planning process was initiated by the Lycksele municipality and supported by the forest companies and the Church of Sweden, who owns forest around Lycksele. To be continued...

• Who started the process?
• What influence did the participation have in the decision process? (for instance compared to Arnstein levels of participation)
• How is the participation process organized?
• What was the time frame for participation?
• What was the time frame related to the project time frame?
• What was the budget of project/participation (for example in money, workdays etc.)?

Problem structuring

• How was the problem defined?
• Who defined the problem? Was participation used in problem definition phase?
• What tools or methods were used in problem structuring, if any?

Intelligence

Stakeholders

• who were the stakeholders?
• how were they selected?

Objectives

• what were the criteria?
• how were they selected?

Preferences

• how were the preferences of the decision makers and stakeholders elicited?

Information

• what information was collected?
• what tools were used for data collection?

Design

Alternatives

• What kind of alternatives were considered?
• How were they defined?
• Who defined them?
• What tools and methods (if any) were used to define them?

Choice

Usage of DSS

• What kind of DSS was used (if any)?
• How was the DSS used in the process?

Usage of models, methods and tools

• What kind of decision support tools (models, methods) were used, if any?
• How were the decision support tools used? (for instance, through internet, with the help of a facilitator, with hands-on experiments)
• Was the use of decision support tools interactive?

Monitoring

• Was the success of the project monitored?
• How was the success of the project monitored? (both process and product)
• Who monitored the success?
• Were the decisions/plans implemented?
• Was the implementation monitored?
• Were the goals set for participation achieved?

References

Nordström, E.-M., Eriksson, Ljusk O. & Öhman, K. 2010. Integrating multiple criteria decision analysis in participatory forest planning: experience from a case study in northern Sweden. Forest Policy and Economics 12(8): 562-574.