Power and interests in environmental policy processes: the Svalbard case

Abstract

ABSTRACT Climate and environmental changes pose tremendous challenges to ecosystems worldwide. While this underscores the need for more significant conservation efforts, these measures often clash with human activities. Participation and transparency may be key to reducing conflict and ensuring high-quality decisions, but facilitating such processes has proven difficult with many interests and stakeholders involved. This often leads to disputes over environmental policies but may also reflect a more profound debate about the definition of wilderness and who it is for. This article, therefore, explores what interests prevail and why in environmental policy processes and how this relates to perceptions of wilderness. Drawing on Lukes’ (2021) three-dimensional view of power and the case of the political process of new environmental regulations in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, the author examines how the power to frame the public discourse about wilderness influences the issues and actors included in the discussion (see also McConnell and Hart 2019, 647). The insights provided are relevant not only to local stakeholders on Svalbard navigating the policy process but also to practitioners and academics elsewhere working in environmental governance, protected areas, and environmental policy and legislation.