Co-existence and conflict in a changing forest landscape: A case study of Maskaure reindeer herding district

Sammanfattning: Land use for reindeer husbandry and forestry are overlapping in large areas of northern Sweden. This co-location is characterized by dynamics in which the forest industry owns the land and the power to transform it, and the reindeer industry possesses a user-right for reindeer grazing and herding. During the last couple of years, critique towards the forest industry has grown louder, and reindeer-herding Sami people argue that their industry is made more difficult in the current form of the landscape. By drawing on tools from political economy, mobilizing landscape theory and the concept of access, this thesis critically investigates how the landscape is produced and reproduced by the practices of forestry, and how reindeer husbandry is affected by the changing form of the landscape. To analyze these dynamics in the concrete, the thesis conducts a case study of Maskaure reindeer herding district. Maskaure is a forest herding district in northern Sweden, at the border between Norrbotten and Västerbotten, whose pastoral practices and activities are negotiated by the landscape transformations which they live in, and produce in. Through fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and secondary data, this thesis examines how the Maskaure landscape is produced by forestry, and how the herding district’s activities are affected, bounded, and negotiated by this form of the landscape. In extension, the thesis investigates how this affects the people who are living in and producing in this landscape. Clear-cutting, fertilization, soil preparation, and re-plantation of densely-growing, non-native tree species – are all interventions in the landscape that create an evenly aged, productive forest landscape, functional for profitable forestry today and in the future. These practices, combined with overlapping land pressures from fossil-free investments into the northern Swedish landscape, result in a spatially fragmented forest for reindeer husbandry. In addition, the political framework set up to protect Sami land use are insufficient in this task, resulting in the political power of the herding district being undermined. Due to these dynamics, reindeer herders are living and working in a landscape that gradually is functionally disintegrated for the purpose of reindeer husbandry. These processes entail that reindeer husbandry in Maskaure today is more difficult, and more expensive, compared to 10-20 years ago.