Ecological crisis and new alliances: From forest debates to forest dialogues

Abstract

Species loss and global warming threaten social stability also in Finland, in the boreal zone. Yet these topics are only partly reflected in the Finnish forest debate, which has evolved around same issues for decades. The institutional ethnography presented in this article makes visible some of the ruling relations in Finnish forest debates and potentialities for different coalitions in an era of ecological crisis. In what ways can sustainability transformations affect the relations in forest policy? The study is based on the author's ethnography as part of the Our Forests citizens' movement, which organised 15 forest dialogues during 2019–2022. They addressed different themes and brought together a diverse range of actors in the forest sector. The analysis is based on participatory observation in nine forest dialogues. While many forest dialogues increased common understanding on some topics, several of them moved around the circles of forest debate and used specialised vocabulary. The article identifies ruling relations that may be altered by the ecological crisis and that may lead to new alliances in Finnish forest policy.