Abstract
This paper explores the process of updating the peatland conservation network in Finland—the Supplemental Mire Conservation Programme, which was drafted from 2012 to 2015. This study employs discursive agency approach (DAA), to reveal how agents actively seek to gain legitimate speaker positions and influence policy outcomes as they rely on existing discourses. It also studies the role of discourse in the context of Finnish peatland conservation policy and evaluates the role of agents in the discursive process and how they influenced the outcome. The empirical data consists of expert interviews, newspaper articles and policy documents. The results indicate that the discourses of ‘maintenance of biodiversity’, ‘regulatory program’, ‘voluntary conservation’ and ‘participatory approach’ influence the peatland conservation policy. Additionally, discursive agency is achieved through hegemonic discourse and a consensus seeking argumentation strategy that rely on keywords, such voluntary and sustainability.
Highlights
This paper studies an ongoing, discursive struggle in conservation policy making
This paper studies the process of updating the Finnish mire conservation network between 2012 and 2015 in the Supplemental Mire Conservation Programme (SMCP)
The aim of this paper is to reveal the discourses and the role of agents in the nature conservation policy process intended to update the Finnish peatland conservation network
Summary
This paper studies an ongoing, discursive struggle in conservation policy making. The discourses of ‘new’ conservation and ‘conventional conservation are contested in recent debates on nature conservation (Kallis et al 2013; Tallis and Lubchenco 2014; Matulis and Moyer 2016). Argues that the rhetoric and discursive practices of environmentalism is insufficient to deal with the practices of current deliberative and strategic policy making (Matulis and Moyer 2016). The policy instruments of ‘conventional conservation’, which aims to establish conservation areas through regulatory practices, has been re-named to command-and control policy, which is a rhetorical accomplishment of agency that favor the deregulation of environmental regulation Inclusive conservation has been suggested as an approach to advance nature conservation through monetary terms and commodification, but through multiple values and inclusive processes (Chan et al 2012; Matulis and Moyer 2016).
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