Ecological and social aspects of biodiversity conservation on private lands

In recent decades, the growing need for biodiversity conservation and the different means of achieving it have been defined in international and national procedures regulated by governments and parliaments on the one hand, and in governance processes run by different stakeholders on the other. In local contexts, however, people perceive the abstract phenomenon of biodiversity conservation through the environment in which they live and through their social and cultural positions. We examine Finnish forest owners’ experiences and perceptions of biodiversity conservation, and consider the compatibility of these perceptions with national conservation policy. Our work is based on a survey of forest owners and the content analysis of national policy documents. We found that the perceptions of forest owners and the documents of nature conservation policy had elements that both overlapped and contradicted each other, thus reflecting different interpretations of forest ownership and biodiversity conservation. Moreover, the national Forest Biodiversity Program – an outcome of a multilateral governance process – was more successful in combining conservation policy with various perspectives of forest owners than was the authoritatively formulated Nature Conservation Act and Decree. This result indicates that governance processes can address conflicts of interest in the use of natural resources.