Convergence or divergence on northern Sweden?

A field case from Swedish Lappland that took an unexpected turn

The National environmental goals

• No success: The implementations of the Swedish environmetal goals in the Swedish mountain district is not going anywhere at the moment

• High ambitions: The environmental goals of Sweden are 16, designed to address all major environmental problems here

• Dispair: The Environmental Protection Agency feels it does not know what to do. Why doesn’t it work when everybody just loves the environment?

Some history of the mountains

• There are several populations in the area– Saami– Swedes– Finns

• The different populations have different lifestyles and languages– Swedes and Finns are urbanized industrialists, Finnish

is FinnoUgrian, Swedish is IndoEuropean– The Saami are partly nomads, largely urbanized, Saami

is a FinnoUgrian language, separate from Finnish

Past abuse of power

• The government mistreated and discriminated the inland population including the Saami during 1550-1970 and commited several grave cases of oppression crimes based on differences in lifestyles

• The government confiscated 90,000 km2 of land with force 400/300/200/100 years ago (from all, mostly illegally then) and kept it with force in all these years against the will of significant parts of the local population

• The abuse and the follow-on effects have lead to many conflicts in the region

• Unclarity concerning ownership and landuse rights create a vacuum that allows the strongest to rule and divide.

They are all equally much Swedes

• The Caucasians arrived 14,000 years ago (5%)

• The Swedes arrived 6,500 years ago (85%)

• The Saami arrived 3,500 years ago (0.6%)

• The Finns arrived 600 years ago (0.8%)

What to do?

• Find the problem and define it• Find causes and causal chains on to effects• Understand the dynamics of the system• Investigate scenarios– Reconstruct the past– Change inputs and conditions– Change the system structures

• Propose ways forward

Get a dedicated team

• Harald Sverdrup, Deniz Koca, Salim Belyazid from Chemical Engineering, Lund University

• Peter Schlyter from Physical Geography, Stockholm University

• Hördur Haraldsson and PO Wickberg from NVV

• 32 stakeholders from the mountain region

Method

• Define the problem• Make system maps to understand what is going on,

how it works, how a lot of stuff interacts• Make sure the stakeholder understand it, by

participating in the actual analysis (They get a sneak course in systems analysis just by taking part in the process)

• Pull consequences out from the diagrams• Make recommendations to the Environmental

protection board

The plan

Planen II

Environmantal goals are only a special case of sustainability goals

Many things to connect

Turism som fenomen

Turism, scooter and natur

Turism, Samiske näringer, fjellandskap

Mountain farms

What it used to be

The etnic group and integration

versus segregation

Additional CLDs for

• Forestry• Sami culture, identity and society• Effects of wild predators on animal husbandry,

turism, biodiversity and natural conservation• Several steps of diagrams for governmental

power structures, use of power, legal system, management of land resources, governance issues, land ownership

A discovery in the group of stakeholders

Abuse of power leads to• Corruption

– Nepotism– Lobbyism– Bribery– Bending the rules

• Lethagy– Give a damn in it– Move to Stockholm

• Selfsufficiency– Underground activities,

segregation and community witdrawal• Ignore permits• Ignore authorities

– Local abuse of power

• Lack of governmental legitimacy

• Institutional inefficiency• Lower standard of living

in the long run

The organization must change

We had some surprises

• Abuse and misuse of power in the region has continued

• Important land rights issues have been left in a state of confusion for a century, allowing continued power abuse

• The legitimacy and credibility of central state authorities is questioned in the area

• Naturvårdsverkets legitimacy is tainted by other agencie’s abuse of power

So what ?

• Environmental goals are not implemented because of issues of legitimacy, credibility and lack of local participation

• The definitions are incomplete and have low relevance to field conditions

• Environment is still seen as a very importnat issue by a majority of the area’s population

Conclusions• Unresolved social issues of governance prevent

implementation of the environmental goals and objectives

• The social issues needs to be resolved in order before the environmental issues can be addressed

• Social trust, legitimacy and credibility is hard to earn and quick to loose

• Without systems analysis we would never have discovered the real problem of the issue

Trust I

Trust II

Trust III

The vicious circle

Sustainability limits economy

3 big challenges• Climate change wil make profound physical changes to the

world cascading into society

• Urbanization and demographic change People getting older, moving from land to city, from land use professions to urbanized occupations.

• The race for energy and material resources The present material use is outstripping the supply capacities of the world, quickly exhausting almost all reserves within a few centuries.

To go on

• Introduction to systems analysis• Group modelling on the case studies• Systems maps• Generate dynamic models• Create indicator-driven diagnostic system

model