Den hållbara skogen? - En WPR-analys av Miljöpartiet och Centerpartiets skogspolitik

Sammanfattning: As climate change is becoming more of a concern for people, the number of issues considered to be related to environmental politics are also increasing. One of the most debated issues concerning environmental policy in Sweden is forestry, where the debate is torn between those concerned about cherishing the landowner’s property rights and those arguing that the forest is a shared responsibility and that we need to increase our efforts to preserve biological diversity. In this essay I try to uncover which values underpin the different ways of thinking about forestry and sustainability by analysing the policies presented by the Swedish Centre Party and the Swedish Green Party using the discursive WPR-method. These parties both invoke sustainability in their arguments, but differ in their perception of what forestry should look like. This essay is concerned both with how the parties differ in their way of thinking about forestry as well as why. Using relevant theory concerning ideology, different schools of thought related to sustainability and voter statistics, I argue that these parties' differences can be explained by their different ideologies, their different perspectives on how we are to reach a sustainable society, and the different voter bases they wish to please. I further argue that these results come to show both the complexity of the process of political positioning, as well as how the same values can be invoked by different parties who do not necessarily agree about their meaning.