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This article explores the dynamic interplay between climate change, people, and regions heavily dependent on forests. Based on Levine’s form analysis, it conceptualizes climate as a relational pattern where collisions between different forms create interstices, opening avenues for alternative comprehension and action. The article argues that climate change is not an external phenomenon but an integrated process that shapes forests and communities, challenging established national forestry frameworks. By rooting the global climate crisis in the forest and its local cultural context, the results reveal climate change as a multifaceted issue, offering opportunities for reconfigurations and kaleidoscopic changes. Through two collaborative processes conducted in northern and southern Sweden, the study highlights how local perspectives and historical practices can foster subtle yet transformative shifts in collective perceptions, ultimately reshaping how societies understand and address the climate crisis.

Climate change requires locally tailored solutions that consider diverse environmental and cultural contexts. This study situates climate action within Sweden's forest landscapes, exploring how local forest stakeholders prioritize and motivate climate action targets for immediate implementation. By engaging in knowledge co-production processes in local communities, we sought to develop place-based climate action pathways, rooted in stakeholders' visions for their communities' futures. We identified three main climate action pathways: forest-based bioeconomy, localism, and global systemic change. These pathways varied in policy targets, governance directions, focus of change, and preferred economic systems. We found that while the pathways generally aligned with the underlying assumptions of overarching scenario archetypes, their ideological differences regarding governance and policy levels and directions were less distinct. Moreover, despite differing foci and perspectives, forest management strategies were similar in all pathways. The ideological dimensions of the climate action pathways became less visible when considering the management of forests. Our findings underscore the embeddedness of local climate action within broader environmental, social, and political structures, and the challenges of linking local landscape understandings to global environmental processes. While practical, locally specific solutions can transcend ideological debates, they may also obscure necessary ideological and political considerations for effective land use and management strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Local actors are recognized as key drivers for climate action. Making climate change relevant and possible to act on in local contexts is thus a critical undertaking for both researchers and society at large. Connecting climate change to people’s known surroundings and experiences, and framing climate action in relation to everyday practices in the local context, might then be crucial to making climate change relevant and actionable on the local level. In this paper, we explore the potential of forests to serve as such a connection. We have worked in close collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders in two case study locations in Sweden to explore potential courses of action for local climate action in relation to forests. We critically analyze these local articulations of climate action and examine the assumptions underlying them, with the aim to assess the effects and consequences of different problem representations. Our results illustrate the challenges of thinking and acting outside of the prevalent business-as-usual or more-of-everything discourses, of recognizing the importance of politics and choice, and of overcoming perceived barriers to action. We find tensions in the allocation of responsibility in both time and space – but also potential room for more local action in assumptions of un- or underused potential for political and civil action on the local level.

There is considerable geographical overlap between areas set aside for nature conservation and Indigenous peoples’ lands, and the social, economic and political consequences of protected areas have often been extensive for Indigenous peoples. The same is true in Sápmi. In Norway, Sweden and Finland, environmental governance and management has historically been largely centralised, with low levels of local influence and control. In line with global trends, the countries’ environmental policies are moving towards collaborative models as a preferred arrangement for environmental management and are increasingly considering Sámi rights to influence over the governance and management of land and natural resources in Sápmi. However, mechanisms to ensure Sámi influence in conservation governance and management differ considerably between the countries. Moreover, collaborative conservation governance and management arrangements do not always deliver the positive social outcomes expected. In this chapter, we discuss the intersection of conservation and Sámi rights on the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish sides of Sápmi, with a particular focus on collaborative arrangements and the ways in which discourses on conservation, collaboration and Indigenous peoples shape conditions for Sámi agency in relation to the governance and management of landscapes for environmental protection.

Forest scenario analysis can help tackle sustainability issues by generating insight into the potential long-term effects of present-day management. In northern Sweden, forests provide important benefits including climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, reindeer husbandry, local livelihoods, and recreation. Informed by local stakeholders’ views on how forests can be enabled to deliver these benefits, we created four forest management scenarios: the close-to-nature scenario (CTN) which emphasises biodiversity conservation, the classic management scenario (CLA) optimising the forests’ net present value, the intensified scenario (INT) maximising harvested wood from the forest, and the combined scenario (COM) applying a combination of measures from the CTN and INT. The scenarios were applied to the local forest landscape and modelled over a 100-year simulation period, and the results of the modelling were then evaluated by a diverse group of stakeholders. For most ecosystem services, there was a time lag of 10–50 years before noticeable effects and differences between the scenarios became evident, highlighting the need to consider both the short- and long-term effects of forest management. Evaluation by the stakeholders put the modelled results into a local context. They raised considerations relating to wildlife and hunting, climate change risks, social acceptability, and conflict, highlighting the value of evaluating the scenarios qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Overall, stakeholders thought that the CTN and CLA scenarios promoted more ecosystem services and posed fewer climate risks, while also creating less conflict among stakeholders. Our results emphasise the value of combining scientific and local knowledge when developing and evaluating future forest scenarios.

In Sweden, environmental governance and management has historically been centralized, with low levels of local influence and control. Although a large proportion of the areas set aside for environmental protection in Sweden are located in Saepmie, the traditional lands of the Saemie people, Saemie influence in the governance and management of these areas has been limited. However, recent events and ongoing processes indicate a potential change in both discourse and policy practice. This paper critically examines the planning process for a proposed national park in the southern part of the Swedish mountain range. It was organized in a collaborative and participatory form, including Saemie representatives on both local and central levels. After several years of planning, local Saemie opposition to the park led to the termination of the process. We investigate discursive constructions of the local Saemie actors’ inclusion in the process and their effects on possible Saemie influence. Our results show that state and Saemie actors articulate inclusion in different ways, limiting and enabling varying forms of influence. The landscape and the state of nature were central constructions affecting the process, and the project’s aim transformed over time – with significant consequences for the process and, possibly, also its results.

Integrated approaches to knowledge that recognize meaning, behavior, culture, and systems as domains of knowledge are increasingly employed in holistic views on sustainability transformation but often remain conceptually driven. In this study, we analyze empirical data from a collaborative process with local forest stakeholders in Sweden through the lens of individual, collective, interior, and exterior knowledge dimensions. We show that the participants’ understanding of knowledge about forests and climate change presents a nuanced picture of how knowledge and acting are connected. Meaning-making, cultural frames, and techno-scientific knowledge conceptions converge, interact, and, at times, replace or diminish each other. The connection and interplay of these dimensions, we suggest, can be understood as a knowledge spectrum. These insights into integrated knowledge, based on an empirical case, must be addressed in the production of knowledge, both to grasp the climate and sustainability issues that face us and to support action in response to them.

The theoretical concept of “climate-smart forestry” aims to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation to maintain and enhance forests’ contributions to people and global agendas. We carried out two local transdisciplinary collaboration processes with the aim of developing local articulations of climate-smart forestry and to identify barriers, pathways and indicators to applying it in practice. During workshops in northern and southern Sweden, local stakeholders described how they would like forests to be managed, considering their past experiences, future visions and climate change. As a result, the stakeholders framed climate-smart forestry as active and diverse management towards multiple goals. They identified several conditions that could act both as barriers and pathways for its implementation in practice, such as value chains for forest products and services, local knowledge and experiences of different management alternatives, and the management of ungulates. Based on the workshop material, a total of 39 indicators for climate-smart forestry were identified, of which six were novel indicators adding to the existing literature. Our results emphasize the importance of understanding the local perspectives to promote climate-smart forestry practices across Europe. We also suggest how the concept of climate-smart forestry can be further developed, through the interplay between theory and practice.

Alla vet att det är bråttom att göra en hållbar omställning. Det har aldrig tidigare funnits en så stor medvetenhet om detta med så mycket kunskap, teknik och styrmedel. Trots det står omställningen och stampar. Kanske hjälper det att vända på perspektivet och belysa hur förändring kan uppstå ur ett mänskligt och lokalt perspektiv? Hur kan förändring ske som är inkluderande och ger människor möjligheter att ta  kontroll över sin situation?

”Ta ner himlen till jorden” har undersökt hur skogen kan användas för att göra klimatfrågan konstruktivt angripbar i lokala sammanhang. I denna skrift presenteras resultat och lärdomar från forskningsprojektet. Dessutom presenteras hur forskarna försökt skapa ringar på vattnet genom sitt arbetssätt, bland annat med hjälp av studiecirklar.