Knowledge and interpretation in environmental conflict: Fish farming and eutrophication in the Archipelago Sea, SW Finland

Abstract

The article deals with the role of knowledge in discursive interpretations of an environmental conflict. The research is embellished through a special case study of the debate on the water eutrophication problem and the fish farming industry in the Finnish Archipelago Sea in southwest (SW) Finland. The main question addressed in the article concerns the competing definitions of the eutrophication problem and its spatial dimensions, and the possible implications these definitions have on the political efforts to solve the problem. My focus lies on the role of knowledge as a resource in the struggle over the definition. Accordingly, I will ask how the actors’ frames and knowledge are connected with their position within the power hierarchy, and their relation with the study area. The results illustrate the dependence of the environmental debate on scientific research, but they also show the lay people’s ambivalent attitude to science. The several gaps, uncertainties and controversies in the knowledge base allow interest groups to select the research results that support their view and challenge other scientific interpretations or to oppose environmental restrictions by referring to uncertainties of knowledge. Tensions are revealed between local and translocal views and several forms of knowledge. Disagreements do not arise, however, between pure, separate forms of knowledge. Particularly the fish farmers’ discursive repertoire holds ingredients provided by traditional knowledge, knowledge based on their own experiences, knowledge produced in co-operation with researchers and popularised science. The results show how the lay persons’ mistrust in scientific knowledge is linked with their critical attitudes towards the motives, interests and values of outside actors. The mistrust implies a strong spatial element, an experienced outside threat to local identity, way of life and traditional user rights of natural resources. Producers and users of scientific research are seen as part of the complex of social and cultural power representing urban recreation interests, ecological fundamentalism and an alienated connection with nature.