Collaborative planning for improving social acceptance of forestry practice in state-owned lands

Lapland has a high proportion of state-owned forests: 60% of forest area is state-owned, compared to state ownership of 26% of forests in Finland in general. Lapland also has a wide range of interest groups and livelihoods operating in forestry areas, which results in a need to combine different interests and needs as well as to reconcile and negotiate. A special emphasis is put on enabling the traditional uses of natural resources, such as reindeer husbandry and the needs and rights of the Sámi people. Tourism brings about the need of new route networks and landscape planning in forestry.
The objective is to combine all these needs and use forestry practices that work best for everyone as well as improve the social acceptance of forestry practices. Metsähallitus, the organisation responsible for managing state-owned forests, uses collaborative forestry planning methods that ensure the local inhabitants and stakeholders have a possibility to influence their living surroundings and the land use. These collaborative methods include cooperation groups, thematic workshops, negotiations and newer types of collaborative planning, such as online map questionnaires to increase public participation. The collaborative method chosen depends on the area in question, the logging volumes and methods etc. In larger scale planning, outside professional facilitation is used in forming and managing a regional cooperation group which consists of representatives of local communities.