Which factors spur forest owners' collaboration over forest waters?

• Published in: Forest Policy and Economics
• Main Author: Mancheva, Irina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Umeå universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen 2018
• Subjects: Privata skogsägare; samverkan; skogsvattenförvaltning; Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies); Statsvetenskap (exklusive studier av offentlig förvaltning och globaliseringsstudier); Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-140596; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.09.002

Collaborative river basin governance has been advocated both by research and legislation, while at the same time certain silvicultural practices are shown to lead to deteriorating water quality. In order for collaboration to be initiated, however, the majority of key stakeholders must be willing to participate. This paper investigates which factors at the local level are crucial for initiating collaboration over forest waters among individual private forest owners. For that purpose, a survey was sent out to all individual forest owners within a catchment area in northern Sweden. The survey was complemented by a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews. The existence of several key preconditions for the initiation of collaboration was investigated, namely: low belief and cultural heterogeneity, information diffusion, perception of the problem, existing stores of social capital, interdependence, and leadership. The results show that although the context was one of low belief and cultural heterogeneity, individual private forest owners are not interested in collaborating for improved forest water unless they perceive the issue of water quality important enough to invest resources in collaboration. It also became clear that the diffusion of information about the problem is not reaching those stakeholders who are crucial for the commencement of collaboration. Moreover, those stakeholders do not recognise their interdependence on each other for resolving the issue and therefore the need for collaboration. Finally, initiating leadership was also found to be lacking, leading to the conclusion that to successfully implement policies requiring collaborative management of natural resources among highly empowered individual forest owners, those missing factors need to be addressed by the state. Special issue: Taking stock of multiple environmental social sciences Friskt vatten: samverkan för att minska skogsbrukets negativa inverkan på vattenkvalitet