Resumen de Back to the Forest’s future: Guiding principles of German forest stakeholders and their impact on the forestry sector
Yvonne Hengst-Ehrhart, Ulrich Schraml
Long-term planning is an important aspect of forestry. The future-oriented guiding principles of forestry stakeholders impact their decisions and therefore the future of the sector. Forestry faces major challenges due to global changes. At the same time, the ability of traditional forestry stakeholders to manage uncertainty and ensure sustainable management is increasingly being questioned from both within and outside the sector. To study the shared and conflicting guiding principles followed by forestry stakeholders and how these might shape stakeholders’ actions, we conducted 49 semi-structured qualitative interviews with different German forestry stakeholders, mostly from Bavaria. We used a qualitative approach and linked the “Leitbild analysis” (Leitbild = German for guiding principles) and the sensemaking concept to derive a typology of six guiding principles followed by forestry stakeholders. Results show that the guiding principles of forestry stakeholders are mostly formed around policy conflicts between traditional forest users and nature conservationists. Differences were mainly based on the question of which side would dominate future forest management. In all the groups, the views reflected were mainly negative, and traditional forestry stakeholders saw themselves losing power and authority in the future. We argue that these negative future expectations might narrow stakeholders’ perspectives on potential chances and opportunities due to the low self-efficacy that we observed. In line with the assumption that by guiding today's actions, future images have a real-world impact, we find that current problems might be perpetuated through the expectation that they will remain unchanged in the future. Based on our findings, we emphasize the need for a stronger focus on potential future chances and shaping options within the German forestry sector and the need to embrace new ways of cooperation between stakeholders.
