Creating the landscape, one stand at a time: The dual roles of timber buyers in the nested domains of Swedish forestry

Abstract

In Sweden forest owners have a high degree of freedom in management decisions, but that does not necessarily imply decisions in isolation. Landowners are often influenced by forestry advisors, shaping forest management practices and the resulting condition of forests. As the State is withdrawing resources from the Swedish Forest Agency, advisory services are widely provided by private actors, particularly timber buyers. This study applies Hägerstrand's framework of nested domains to explore the role of timber buyers, with emphasis on their spatial competence. We expand Hägerstrand's theory by integrating private domains, which play an important role in landscape governance. Semi-structured interviews reveal the dynamics of timber buyers' dual role. Despite access to extensive data when giving advice, timber buyers rely largely on personal experience and information at the stand and property level, and environmental data are largely overshadowed by data related to timber production. Despite the buyers' greater spatial competence in comparison to landowners, they lack incentives to actively apply a landscape perspective in forest planning and management. There is underutilised potential for effectively balancing timber production, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity conservation at the landscape level through the advisory services by private actors. Our operationalized framework is helpful in analyzing FOKIS in Sweden, where compatibility of different types of advice providers needs further attention.