The northern natures - a study of the forest question emerging within the timber-line conflict in Finland

Abstract

The aim of this study is to shape the societal transformation of nature, both by examining its conceptual variations and by illustrating its specific images and practices as they have occurred during the course of the northern forest conflict in Finland. In general, the modern conceptualization of nature is based on a dualism where an abstraction of wild nature beyond human impact and an idea of a resource waiting to be utilized co-exist. These two poles function as dominant motives for defining the natural realm and, in addition, they have a reciprocal dependency on each other. Concretely, the conservation of wilderness and the industrial exploitation of natural resources meet each other at the point where the exact frontier between the two natures is drawn. Decisions concerning conservation justify the intensive exploitation of nature beyond the defined nature reserves; whereas economic growth, as a result of the intensive exploitation of nature, gives an opportunity for leaving some nature reserves "untouched". Thus, nature is situated 'out there', then dichotomized and, finally, defined as a bipolar object under human control. The expansion of this dualism over the local and traditional images and practices of nature is seen in this study as the main reason for the actual ecological problems.

In the northern timber-line context, the modern projection of the two natures is illustrated through the southern development impulses bound to forestry practices and demands for saving the last wildernesses. In addition, some references to similar kinds of problems actualized in reindeer herding and modern tourism are included in the study. Both within and between these societal sectors, several contradictory processes have come to the surface, which extend from sustainable (or viable) to extractive (or monocultural) development motives. However, the general tendency seems to be toward monotonized land-use patterns; the landscape mosaic at the timber-line gradually turns to a chessboard of resource extraction and conservation. Thus, the northern natures increasingly become as reflections of the modern natures imported from the south.