Nature conservation in the Nordic countries: Consensus rather than conflict

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the aims, methods, planning and management, and current problems of countryside conservation in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The traditional Nordic common-law of “every man's right of access” to the countryside is of longstanding. In these countries conservation is as much concerned with the protection, for public use, of landscapes of recreational and/or scenic value as with the conservation of ‘wild nature’. In addition, conservation is usually closely integrated with other aspects of physical planning, while responsibility for its management has been devolved, to a greater or lesser extent, from national or regional authorities to local government. The particular aims and methods of conservation, however, vary with the nature of the biophysical resource base, the legislative structure and the stage of conservation planning in the individual countries. In this respect, Denmark has the most sophisticated and developed system, Finland the least. The wider concept of conservation and its close integration with countryside planning in all the Nordic countries contrast with conservation in the U.K. It is suggested that the Nordic approach to the solution of conservation problems might be relevant to a solution of the increasing conflict of ecological, economic and social interests in the British countryside today.