Human environmental interactions in Upper Lapland, Finland: Development of participatory research strategies

Abstract

The paper outlines strategies for participatory research by comparing the results of a participatory workshop on research needs in human‐environmental interaction in Finnish Lapland with an analysis of official Finnish policy documents on the same subject. The workshop was organized in Anár/Inari, Finland in October 1997 as part of the Human Environmental Interactions theme (HEI) of the European Commission's Arctic‐Alpine Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Initiative (ARTERI). The mandate of ARTERI was to develop research themes and encourage their implementation to allow for discussions among local residents, natural and social scientists, and policy‐makers concerned with environmental protection and management in arctic and alpine regions of Europe. The objective of the Anár/Inari workshop was to discuss central issues of human‐environmental interaction in the region in a participatory mode with local interest groups, generate alternative scenarios for the region, and develop research and development project proposals on the basis of the scenarios. The paper discusses the scenarios and the project proposals that the workshop developed, and compares them with official Finnish policies on forestry and reindeer management in Lapland. From methodological and theoretical perspectives, the workshop was a unique empirical setting within which to investigate the dynamic interaction between traditional and modern knowledge sets on human‐environmental interaction. From the policy perspective, the comparison of workshop recommendations and official policies offers valuable indications for future directions in participatory policy‐making in the region and novel ways of balancing the conflicting demands on environmental resources, such as reindeer management, forestry, and tourism.