Traditional and Local Knowledge in Land Use Planning

The Enontekiö Municipality in the Finnish Saami homeland as an example

Abstract

Land Use and Building Act provides interaction and participation of local people in land use planning. Convention on Biological Diversity requires traditional and local knowledge to be taken into account in land use planning. In the Saami homeland of Finland Metsähallitus, first in the world, has applied the voluntary Akwé: Kon Guidelines to fulfill the requirements of the Convention. Here we study the experiences of applying Akwé: Kon Guidelines into land use planning, based on PPGIS (Public Participatory GIS) survey and interviews of officials and local Saami reindeer herders conducted in 2016–2018 in Enontekiö. The Saami informants reported that Reindeer Husbandry Act does not recognize and protect the Saami reindeer herding system and related knowledge, and this makes inclusion of traditional knowledge into land use planning very difficult. The planners of Metsähallitus brought out the need for exact localization of knowledge and problems related to the inclusion of experience-based knowledge into planning systems. Participatory GIS methods may offer a functional tool for documenting traditional knowledge, but unsolved questions related to the access to natural resources and Saami cultural heritage make knowledge localization on the maps challenging.