Luonnonvarojen käytön ja dynamiikan hallinta yksityismailla

Abstract

Tutkimuksen kohteena ovat yksityismetsätalous ja rantojen rakentaminen. Metsänomistajia ja kesämökkiläisiä tarkastellaan luonnonvarapolitiikan olennaisina toimijoina, luonnonhoitajina. He ovat ohjauksen kohteena, kun politiikan linjauksia viedään täytäntöön asiantuntijoiden, luokitusten ja standardien välityksellä. Näin muodostuu luonnonvarapolitiikan perusjännite, sillä hallinnan maailma on perustaltaan varsin toisenlainen kuin luonnonhoitajien monivivahteinen elämismaailma.

Luonnonvarapolitiikkaa käsitellään työssä monitieteisesti, erityisesti kulttuurisesta ja dynaamisesta näkökulmasta. Kohdennus metsätalouteen ja rantojen rakentamiseen tarjoaa vertailuasetelman, ja samalla päästään luonnonvarojen käytön suomalaiseen ytimeen. Yksityismaiden metsäkiinteistöjä ja mökkitontteja on kumpiakin lähes puoli miljoonaa. Yksityismetsistä saatava raakapuu on tärkeä metsäteollisuudelle, ja mökkitonteista on tullut maaseudun ja kuntien kehittämisen uusi painopiste. Tärkeimpiin ohjausvälineisiin kuuluvat metsäsuunnittelu ja rantojen yleiskaavoitus.

Tutkimuksessa avataan luonnonvaratutkimukseen uusi lähestymistapa tarkastelemalla edellä mainittua politiikan perusjännitettä hallinnan artefaktien kautta. Sellaisia ovat metsikkökuvio (yhtenäisen puuston muodostama metsänkäsittelyn kokonaisuus) ja mökkitontti. Ne ovat luonnonhoitajien noudattamien hoitokäytäntöjen ja luonnon kasvun yhteistuloksia - siis luonnon ja kulttuurin risteymiä kuten muutkin artefaktit - ja samalla toimivat hallintayksikköinä metsäsuunnittelussa ja rantojen kaavoituksessa. Käytetty lähestymistapa kaventaa perinteistä kuilua ihmistoiminnan ja luonnon välillä. Tämä perustuu osaksi siihen, että monet tutkimuksessa osoitetut ilmiöt ovat epälineaarisia ja toistuvat peruspiirteiltään samankaltaisina sekä luonnossa että sosiaalisessa ympäristössä.

Työ perustuu Pirkanmaalla toteutettuihin tapaustutkimuksiin. Niissä on haastateltu metsänomistajia ja kesämökkiläisiä sekä havainnoitu heidän luonnonhoidon käytäntöjään ja työnsä tuloksia. Niinikään on haastateltu metsänomistajien ohjauksesta vastaavia metsäammattilaisia sekä seurattu kestävän metsäpolitiikan muotoilua maakunnan yhteistyötahojen kesken. Lisäksi on analysoitu metsätalouden ja metsänhoidon samoin kuin kesämökkikulttuurin historiallisia kehitysvaiheita. Kesämökkiasutuksen ekologisia vaikutuksia on tutkittu Roineella.

Tulokset osoittavat, että ekologinen ja sosiaalinen monimuotoisuus toteutuvat yhtäaikaisesti, ekososiaalisina prosesseina, ja tuottavat paljon suuremman paikallisvaihtelun kuin ohjauksen näkökulmasta on nykyisellään mahdollista tunnistaa. Näin menetetään merkittäviä mahdollisuuksia pyrittäessä luonnonvarojen kestävään käyttöön. Jatkotutkimukselle onkin osoitettavissa selviä kohdennusalueita.

This study represents a multidisciplinary approach to natural resource policy. I lay particular emphasis on two dimensions of this field of policy. On one hand, I focus on cultural aspects in the use and control of natural resources, and, in particular, on social and ecological diversity on a local level. In addition to some elements of anthropology, environmental history and sociology, my methodological approach derives from ecological psychology, policy analysis, science and technology studies, discourse analysis, and, in some parts, from ecological sciences. On the other hand, I emphasize the dynamic aspects of resource policy. I apply some basic principles of the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems in order to use them as analog models. Through these two perspectives I integrate my diverse case studies to develop an argument that underlines the significance of intertwined socio-ecological processes instead of leaning on the conventional distinction between the social a! nd the ecological.

I define the control of natural resource use in private land areas as a dynamic complex of three components: (1) private individuals as owners and managers of their land areas, (2) the continuously changing and varying nature as an element to be utilized by them and (3) the practical control of individual managers ­ the control deriving from the guidelines of resource use policy. The main determinants of the dynamics are, respectively, the management routines of individual managers, the growth of nature, and the regimes and practices of political control. As a consequence of mutual interaction of its components, the complex is changing all the time in the course of its historical development.

In this study, I deal with the use of forests and shoreline areas. These two natural resource types are very extensively exploited in Finland in timber production and in providing building sites for summer cottages in the market. Resulting from a long-lasting history of small-scale farming, the exploitation is based on fairly small properties owned by private persons and their families. At the moment, the population of 5 million Finns have about 0.5 million private forest properties (25 hectares by average), and also 0.5 million private shoreline sites (0.3 ­ 0.6 hectares by average) with summer cottages. Control of these natural resources is based on quite modernized, mechanized and professionalized systems; their main instruments are forest management planning and master planning of shoreline areas. Most forest owners manage their forest parcels themselves, partly at least, and also cottage occupants, who in most cases are also owners, manage actively their semi-natural si! tes on the shoreline.

This study is based on five empirical cases; the data were collected in the province of Pirkanmaa, South Western Finland, in the late 1990s. First, I studied the management practices of eight private forest owners ethnographically: I walked individually with each one of them in their forest parcels and made interviews and observations on their management routines. Secondly, I collected material on management practices of summer cottage occupants by interviewing 24 of them at their shoreline sites. Apart from these sites I made observations at some 200 other sites without any interviews. On the basis of the ecological field work, I assessed the ecological changes in shoreline habitats caused by summer cottage dwelling. I extended the examination by analyzing ecohistorical layers of the studied area. Thirdly, my data on the practical control of forest owners is based on thorough interviews with fifteen forestry professionals who were working with forest owners as planners, timber buyers and advisers. Fourthly, after combining the data of my first and third case studies with longitudinal material from the history of forestry, I analyzed the socio-technical and political long-term development of the control practices used in forestry and silviculture. Fifthly, I analyzed the development of the discursive struggle on ecological sustainability in the first Finnish forest policy process on a regional level based on multi-stakeholder participation.

The central idea I develop throughout the study is that the forest stand (the basic unit of forest management) and the site of summer cottage can be productively analyzed as a dynamic three-dimensional complex, such as described above. This leads to a new kind of policy analysis. As a result of such an analysis, I specified the following characteristics of the stand and the site. These characteristics occur simultaneously and have major influence on the control and use of forests and shoreline areas.

First, the stand and the site are artefacts in which individual management routines and nature s growth are deeply intertwined. This reciprocal interaction between the social and the ecological is based on affordances, i.e. specific objects and events in the environment that afford something to the manager if s/he can perceive it during his/her practical engagement with the environment. By scrutinizing the routines of individual managers, I identified ten cyclic mechanisms producing the dynamics of affordances.

The stand and the site are highly naturalized as artefacts, and therefore they work as an invisible frame for the activities of managers and the professionals advising them. This is significant, since the stand and the site are the basic control units of these natural resources and the individual managers in question. This centralized top-down control and monitoring is based on simplification, quantification and classification of nature. The role of different standards and categories is crucial. They have material force since they are embedded in the stand and the site, i.e. in the growth of nature, and through it they regulate human interaction inconspicuously.

Finally, from a historical point of view, the stand and the site are emergent but fairly stable structures. The potentials and constraints that these two artefacts afford to the actors of resource policy have changed while the artefacts have developed through the critical stages of socio-cultural cycles. The stand and the site are increasingly coupled to the information networks of the market, the technological development, and the scientific control from a distance. Simultaneously, the individual managers have absorbed new identities.

My findings suggest that classification systems using natural artefacts, such as the stand and the site, as their control units make the control blind to the nonlinear socio-ecological dynamics. Consequently, the diversity of individual managers cannot be perceived as a potential in natural resource policy. Focal points for further studies can be identified on the basis of these findings.