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. The process started with a meeting for representatives from the three forest-owning companies, the Church of Sweden, the municipality, the Forest Agency, the County Board, and two researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. In this first meeting, these representatives formed a steering group for the planning process. A general outline of a five-step process combining MCDA and participatory planning was proposed by the researchers: 1) stakeholder analysis, 2) structuring of the decision problem, 3) generation of alternatives, 4) elicitation of preferences, and 5) ranking of alternatives. The process and expectations and apprehensions of the forest owners were then discussed.

Problem structuring

In the first meeting of the steering group, two different exercises were used to define the problem and form a basis for the stakeholder analysis. In the first exercise, the members of the steering group were asked individually to write down potential stakeholders on Post-It notes. The notes were then displayed on a whiteboard. The results were discussed and the proposed stakeholders were grouped according to assumptions of common interests. The stakeholders that were identified were all associations, companies, and other organizations or groups, not individuals. The purpose of the second exercise was to determine appropriate levels of participation in the planning process. A variety of the ladder of participation (see Tab. 1) ^[1] was presented and briefly explained to the members of the steering group, who were asked to place the different groups of stakeholders on appropriate levels of participation. This task was also done individually, and each member presented and justified his or her suggestion. The results were then discussed by the group and a model was created with the desired level of participation for each group of stakeholders. According to this model, the forest owners were to retain the decision-making power, while representatives for nature conservation, outdoor activities, tourism, education, and the reindeer herding industry were placed on the involvement level. The general public was placed on the consultation level.

Table 1. The IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation (© 2007 International Association for Public Participation, www.iap2.org)

Intelligence

Stakeholders

After the first meeting, the list of identified stakeholders was concretized to selected people by the researchers, in cooperation with the municipality ecologist. The majority of people selected as representatives for different interests were members of an existing network used by the municipality ecologist as a reference group in forestry-related issues. The stakeholders were grouped into four different groups: timber producers, reindeer herders, recreationists, and environmentalists.

• 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.

Cited references

1. ↑ IAP2 (2007) IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation [online]. Available from: http://www.iap2.org/associations/4748/files/IAP2%20Spectrum_vertical.pdf. [14 October 2010]

External resources