The process of creating Biosphere Reserves- An ... - Naturvårdsverket

SWEDISH ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY REPORT 6563
The process of creating Biosphere Reserves
5 Summary reflections and
recommendations
Policy documents, as well as research within democracy and nature resource management,
argue that the participation of the general public in nature resource management,
leads to a wider knowledge base/knowledge exchange and more sustainable
decisions on the environment. The way in which different stakeholders communicate
the Biosphere concept and partake in the Biosphere work, has consequences
for how the Biosphere Reserves develop in the long term.
A central task during the candidature phase, but also after the areas had been officially
approved as Biosphere Reserves, was to supply the Biosphere concept with
attractive content. Through communicative processes, different stakeholders attributed
different meanings to what the concept of a Biosphere Reserve comprises.
These meanings can in the long term be normative over what one can or cannot do
in a Biosphere Reserve, which in time can develop into new informal regulations
and attitudes to the location (cf. Sandström, 2008). Our view is that the identity and
norm development in the various Biosphere Reserves is still in its infancy. Kristianstad
Wetland has come furthest, and here one can say that the Biosphere work
has contributed to the altering of people’s perceptions of a “water-soaked landscape
in need of draining” to a perception of a “wetland” landscape with unique
features worth preserving. This new way of relating to ones physical environment
has similarities to the French modernist Dushamp’s art vision or paradigm shift, i.e.
when the viewer of an object or a landscape makes a complete about face in their
views (cf. Brulin and Emriksson, 2005). Common to all Biosphere initiatives is that
they contribute to people beginning to see their surroundings through new eyes,
which in the long term gives the opportunity to generate new life force and location
identity.
Our review shows that the implementation processes to achieve Biosphere Reserve
status are marked by different forms of governance and participation. Interactive
governance (Hedlund & Montin, 2009:32) conceptualises the social phenomenon
that in recent decades made its mark on policy after policy in Sweden, not least
within the Swedish Nature Conservation Policy. Interactive governance is characterised
by a transition from a more hierarchical form of government, to a more
collaboratively directed and network-based form of government, which is distinguished
among other things by a wish to involve a diversity of stakeholders. Interactive
governance is often seen as a way to anchor decisions made, and facilitate
implementation. (Hedlund and Montin, 2009)
The interactive governance in the five Biosphere Reserves investigated differ however,
which to a certain extent has to do with the origins of the initiative, but also
land ownership, earlier organisational arrangements, financing and natural geographical
prerequisites etc. In Kristianstad Wetland the work has to a large extent
been a municipal matter, dependent upon a couple of driven enthusiasts, where
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