New institutional approach to collaborative forest planning on public land: Methods for analysis and lessons for policy

Abstract

Collaborative planning has become an increasingly popular approach in environmental decision-making, particularly in situations where there are multiple actors with conflicting interests. In this paper, collaborative environmental planning is perceived as being embedded in an institutional environment that has an impact on the processes and outcomes of planning. Building on the theory of new institutionalism, the paper combines legal analysis of forest regulation with interviews and policy document data from two case studies on collaborative Natural Resource Planning in state-owned forests in Finland. These approaches will be used to analyse how formal regulations and informal norms are interpreted and implemented in the planning processes. The paper highlights the important role institutions can play in promoting or hindering successful collaborative planning, and makes recommendations for developing a forest governance system that is equipped to deal with the identified challenges.

Introduction

Collaborative planning has become an increasingly popular approach in environmental decision-making, particularly in situations where there are multiple actors with conflicting interests (Wondolleck and Yaffee, 2000). Different collaborative arrangements vary in terms of objectives, outcomes and the degree and form of input from the different actors. Here collaborative planning is understood as a policy process that engages the participants in face-to-face dialogue with one another and with decision makers in order to seek mutually acceptable outcomes (Innes and Booher, 2000).

There are differences between jurisdictions in how collaborative planning is regulated, ranging from extensive legislation to voluntary or self-regulated undertakings (Boswell Franklin, 1998, Mäkinen, 2007). The regulatory context has consequences for the planning alternatives available to management agencies and for the leverage of the different stakeholders, and international research shows that successful participation and integration of diverse interests in planning depends to a significant extent on sufficient legislation and enforcement mechanisms (Boswell Franklin, 1998, Sinclair and Doelle, 2003). Yet research on collaborative environmental planning has been criticised for focusing too much on negotiations and bargaining “around the table” at the expense of the regulatory framework and other structural factors “outside the dialogue” (Fischler, 2000, Hillier, 2003).

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between collaborative planning and its regulatory context in two cases of collaborative forest planning on state-owned land in Finland. An increasingly diverse mix of actors from all levels of governance interacts in the policy formulation for publicly owned forests that cover one quarter of the productive forest land in Finland. Since mid-1990s, Metsähallitus (the Finnish Forest and Park Service), the agency which manages public land, has used Collaborative Natural Resource Planning (NRP) in order to mitigate conflicts and improve the legitimacy of state forestry. In the county of Kainuu, the forest debate has focused around employment provided by forestry vis-à-vis the protection of the remaining old-growth forests. In Northern Lapland, the central goal of NRP has been to reconcile the needs of timber production with the reindeer husbandry of the indigenous Sámi people, but the processes have been plagued with conflict. The focus of this paper is on the role that regulatory structures have played for the strategies and decisions of the agency in these two cases, and for the role of the participants in the NRP processes.

The paper draws on the theory of new institutionalism (NI), which provides a fruitful platform for combining a legal analysis of regulations with the qualitative analysis of the consequences of the regulations for collaborative planning (Hay, 2002, Peters, 2005). NI draws attention to the interplay between the regulatory system and the social system at large, providing insights for developing both regulation and the practices of environmental management.