Finnmark landscape

Finnmark landscape in change: support and participation concerning FeFo; local resource use, industrial value creation and global changes

The prospect of industrial value creation in the north makes up central scenery for national, regional and local resource- and environmental management. The project focuses on the role of the Finnmark Estate (FeFo) as manager and protecting agent of the interests of the population in Finnmark versus the role as commercial agent and potential rival to local resource users. This is made topical due to the question of the legitimacy of the surrounding environment because land dispositions benefiting commercial activities can contradict existing use. The current development is characterized with emerging new opportunities for commercial cooperation and co-governing arrangements.

The main approach of the project is how different resource users experience the ownership dispositions and management of FeFo, given the different and opposing interests. The goal is to investigate the legitimacy of FeFo as landowner, manager and commercial actor, and also how different strategies of resource management ensure the influence of different groups and their attachment to ecosystem services.

How, and to what degree, are people dependent on natural resources or ecosystem services (ES), e.g. the many ways a society enjoys the benefits of nature, and how is this expressed when encountering the management institutions’ dispositions of natural resources? Is the resource dependency reflected in the disposition of the management of land and resources? How do the different interests act in relation to FeFo? What is the significance of people’s resource dependency on the legitimacy of FeFo as an owner, a manager and a commercial agent? The project shall generate knowledge about co-management regimes on management and value creation in the Canadian north of relevance to a Norwegian context.

As a cross-disciplinary project, it is placed in the contact face between social sciences and ecological research, and is in search of data about people’s own value setting and actual use of ES, management strategies and implementation and the interpretations of management practices in the environment.

Thus, the project has to map ES – values and use; analyze the resource dependency in light of FeFo’s dispositions as manager and commercial actor; analyze degree of affiliation with the management and opportunities of user participation; and discuss methods of conflict resolution and interaction in the management of resources and environment.