The two latest IPCC assessment reports have concluded that knowledge is not sufficient for inducing action on climate change. This study problematizes the issue of going beyond business-as-usual through a study of the forestry sector in Sweden, which is a large economic sector and could be expected to be an early adapter, given that newly planted forest may stand some 70-90 years into the future. Therefore resources, economic motivation in the longer term and environmental foundations for early adaptation action could be expected to exist. This study draws upon the Foucauldian conceptualization of governmentality to explain the particular institutional logics that nevertheless lead to business-as-usual arguments dominating discussion on adaptation in the case of Swedish forestry. The study emphasizes that adaptation must be seen as steered and limited by existing institutional, social system logics, rather than by externally defined "rational" motivations. Efforts on adaptation to climate change must thus be considered in relation to, and seek to change, existing institutionally based motivational and incentive structures, and must thus be conceived through social rather than environmental logics. In fact, social logics may even define the types of actions that may be regarded as adaptations.

Managed forests can play an important role in climate change mitigation due to their capacity to sequester carbon. However, it has proven difficult to harness their full potential for climate change mitigation. Managed forests are often referred to as socio-ecological systems as the human dimension is an integral part of the system. When attempting to change systems that are influenced by factors such as collective knowledge, social organization, understanding of the situation and values represented in society, initial intentions often shift due to the complexity of political, social and scientific interactions. Currently, the scientific literature is dispersed over the differentfactorsrelated tothe socio-ecological system. Toexamine thelevelofdispersion andtoobtainaholistic view, we review climate change mitigation in the context of Swedish forest research. We introduce a heuristic framework to understand decision-making connected to climate change mitigation. We apply our framework to two themes which span different dimensions in the socio-ecological system: carbon accounting and bioenergy. A key finding in the literature was the perception that current uncertainties regarding the reliability of different methods of carbon accounting inhibits international agreement on the use of forests for climate change mitigation. This feeds into a strategic obstacle affecting the willingness of individual countries to implement forestrelated carbon emission reduction policies. Decisions on the utilization of forests for bioenergy are impeded by a lack of knowledge regarding the resultant biophysical and social consequences. This interacts negatively with the development of institutional incentives regarding the production of bioenergy using forest products. Normative disagreement about acceptable forest use further affects these scientific discussions and therefore is an over-arching influence on decision-making. With our framework, we capture this complexity and make obstacles to decision-making more transparent to enable their more effective resolution. We have identified the main research areas concerned with the use of managed forest in climate change mitigation and the obstacles that are connected to decision making.

When ethnicity is said to be manifest and practised through handicrafts, these seemingly innocent objects become political. They raise questions concerning who can do what handicraft, who can use what symbols or what developments are“allowed”. They illustrate the continuous production of ethnic norms and boundaries, especially when global tourism enters into the equation. Taking a social constructivist perspective, our study addresses ethnic boundaries and boundary-making in handicrafts in northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. Our findings are based on fieldwork (35 interviewees) with people of diverse local backgrounds making and selling handicrafts. Methodologically, we avoid preselecting people based on ethnicity, but instead contribute to an understanding of the constitutive processes of ethnicity by looking at how ethnic talk comes into conversations about handicrafts. Our findings demonstrate that the interviewees draw an ethnic divide between“Sámi”/“non-Sámi”, while other ethnic-choices move to the background. This divide can be seen to be amplified by tourism. The boundary for who can make a Sámi handicraft or use Sámi symbols remains significant, yet also fluid. The article deepens the understanding of the Sámi/non-Sámi ethnic categorization, here in relation to handicrafts. It also helps unravel the complexities between tourism, ethnicities and handicrafts more broadly.

International trade and climate change have increased the movement potential for invasive alien species (IAS), including invasive pests and pathogens (IPPs), to the point where biological invasions are considered one of the major threats to biodiversity. However, practical implementation of plant health with regard to IAS and IPPs is difficult: regulative responsibilities are commonly spread across different authorities, and resources on the ground are often limited. Based on a legislative and literature review and semi-structured qualitative interviews (N = 7), the present study examines the possibilities and potential risks of monitoring and detection of forest invasive species in Sweden, with a particular focus on forest plant nurseries. The study thus adds practical implementation aspects concerning possibilities to limit the spread of invasive species in the plant trade.

With a changing climate, storm and wind throw is becoming an increasing risk to forest. However, Swedish forest management practices have so far involved relatively little consideration of adaptation to climate change. This study examined resistance and alternatives to business as usual forest management, drawing upon material obtained in interviews with individual forest owners who spontaneously identified and discussed storm and wind throw as a risk to their forest. They thereby expressed a logic differing from that of the forest industry in Sweden, which has largely normalised storm risk rather than considering it in climate change adaptation work. The present analysis illustrates the broad and largely concerned position of individual forest owners, in contrast with a more established industry position on storm as an accepted and existing risk. Overall, the study highlights the diversity, agency and power relations within Swedish forestry and the forested landscape - aspects that are vital to better understanding processes relevant to forest and climate change adaptation.

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification program in Russia is now well established and, in addition to fishery clients and stakeholders, involves environmental NGOs and experts familiar with the local management system. The present study aims to analyze the current status of the program and constitutes the first study covering all Russian MSC certifications. Based on certification reports and twenty semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, it was shown that problems with certification vary among fisheries. The most advanced in terms of management are the Barents Sea codfish fisheries, which are co-managed by Russia and Norway. The main concern of these fisheries is the use of bottom trawls, which may seriously affect bottom communities. The Alaska pollock fishery in the Sea of Okhotsk experienced serious pressure from rival fisheries during the certification process. In the Far East, interviewees dealing with the salmon fisheries note a high level of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and insufficient scientific data for comprehensive stock assessment. For small-scale inland perch fisheries from the central part of the country, recreational and illegal fishing are important problems that are difficult to quantify. Many interviewees repeatedly mentioned communication issues, difficulties with access to scientific and management information, and the overall complexity of the MSC certification process. The study shows that important preconditions to expanding certification are making the process manageable for export-oriented companies and developing a national market for sustainable seafood.

Thus far, the relation between place attachment and lifestyle entrepreneurship has received limited attention in tourism studies. Our study addresses tourism actors' relationship to the place of their engagement, here the Jukkasjärvi area of northern Sweden. Using a qualitative approach, we analyse their place attachment with particular attention to their perceptions of nature. Thereby, we contribute to a deeper understanding of the theoretical linkage between place attachment and lifestyle entrepreneurship in rural nature-based tourism. We find that all actors have strong bonds to the places of their engagement, which we suggest is a key motivator for their professional engagement with tourism. Furthermore, our findings highlight that not only the functional dimension of the environment, but particularly emotional attachment to the environment allows people to perceive places as "ideal" for their activities. All actors speak of their strong appreciation of the natural environment, in particular the climate and seasons, and they embody their attachment through diverse outdoor activities. They claim they wish to "share their lifestyle" with tourists and pursue work-related activities in the same ways and in the same places as their private activities. Hence, we propose that positive perceptions of the natural environment and particularly enthusiasm for different outdoor activities foster as well as promote tourism activity more than other factors do. Hence, our findings illustrate that place attachment may stimulate and promote tourism activity in different ways as well as that tourism activity itself can be seen as an expression of place attachment. This has significant implications both for successful tourism entrepreneurship and industry, or possibly entrepreneurship in rural areas more broadly, as well as for rural development and the promotion of active decisions to "stay".

With the boom in mining in Fennoscandia, reconciliation of competing land use interests in governance procedures such as impact assessment has come to the fore. One of the functions that has been applied to varying degrees in national frameworks is supervision of the procedure by a responsible authority. This paper examines review statements issued in the context of mining project assessments in northern Finland, one of the countries implementing authority supervision. The study shows that third-party review may play a role in highlighting the importance of competing land use interest such as reindeer herding. Attention to such interests, however, remains limited by the application of spatial planning in the case and by consent processing, up until the end of the period examined. Among the lessons for impact assessment is the need for methodologies for accommodating anticipatory types of (practice-based and non-scientific) information. Unless these types of sources are considered valid, the possibility of substantializing anticipation and finding solutions along those lines will be missed, with the risk of making things on the ground worse before the need for mitigation measures is comprehended in the face of materializing impacts.

Adaptation to climate change has often been discussed from the perspectives of social vulnerability and community vulnerability, recognising that characteristics at local level will influence the particular adaptations undertaken. However, the extent to which national-level systemic factors influence and shape measures defined as adaptations has seldom been recognised. Focusing on adaptation to climate change in forestry, this study uses the example of two countries in the northern hemisphere with different forest ownership structures, forestry industry and traditions: Sweden, with strong private, non-industrial ownership, dominant forest industry and long forestry traditions; and Scotland, with forest ownership dominated by large estates and investment forestry based on plantations of exotic conifer species. The study shows how adaptation to climate change is structurally embedded and conditioned, which has resulted in specific challenges and constraints for different groups of forest owners within these two different contexts. This produces a specific set of political spaces and policy tools by rendering climate change in relation to forestry manageable, negotiable and practical/logical in specific ways. It is recommended that the focus of future work on climate-related issues and development of adaptation measures and policy should not be primarily on climate-related factors, but on institutional analysis of structural factors and logics in target sectors, in order to critically explore concepts of agency and power within these processes.

In tourism, simplified destination representations are often assumed to be a necessity in order to compete in an international marketplace. Consequently, destination dynamics are regarded as characterised by power struggles over these representations, and power is often seen as lying outside of the destination, depriving local tourism actors of agency. In this study, the Jukkasjärvi area in northern Sweden is taken as an example in order to study the complexity of these processes and show whether power also lies within destinations. This study was based on a Foucauldian discourse analysis taking into account different groups (tourism companies, DMOs and tourists) and both interview (local tourism) and online material (tourism websites and TripAdvisor reviews from mostly international tourists). The results illustrate that the different tourism actors in the Jukkasjärvi case discursively co-construct the destination as naturalised/authenticated while also regarding it as packaged and constructed for tourism production. Consequently, our work suggests a more critical approach towards depicting local tourism actors as deprived of power over representations, as well as paying more attention (also methodologically) to the co-constructive nature of destination discourses and how these are packaged in relation to potential tourism market requirements.