Klimatanpassad skog, ett långsiktigt men lokalt ansvar? : En analys av skogsägares syn på sin roll i klimatanpassning

Sammanfattning: The climate means a number of different challenges for the forest, which can both suffer large-scale negative consequences, and at the same time create the conditions for more growth, depending on regional conditions. The Swedish forest industry has contributed to the development of Swedish welfare, which historically has also been supported by the government through laws and regulations that made this development possible. The historically strong support for the forest industry is argued in this work to have led to a path dependency in how Swedish forests should be managed in order to optimize growth in the way that the forest industry wants it. Furthermore, it is described how the path-dependent management methods were able to continue, and how today it creates problems when forest management methods need to be adapted in order to be resistant to a changing climate in the long term. A reluctance to adapt the industry's management methods instead puts great trust for climate adaptation in Sweden's large proportion of private forest owners and their local knowledge. This paper aims to investigate how the important local conditions affect forestry climate adaptation efforts, by collecting mixed quantitative and qualitative data with a survey, and using descriptive statistics and a thematic analysis to analyze the survey responses. The result shows that local forest owners have been given a role as forestry climate adaptation agents as a result of a deep-rooted path dependency in Swedish forestry methods, and that information about management methods and climate change affects the forest owners' knowledge of climate adaptation of forestry at the local level.