By Jackie Hamilton, PhD Candidate at McGill University

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We open with a wide shot of the welcome ceremony at IUFRO. Nearly 5000 people from all over the world are seated in this room and a sense of anticipation looms. Swedish folk musicians begin on stage, playing wooden instruments from local forests while imagery of Swedish forests plays behind them. We move from this massive conference center in the city to a protected forest south of Stockholm. Here, a more intimate group of 20 scholars move through the forest from one outdoor research poster presentation to the next, snacking on blueberries we’ve foraged along the way. 

In Sweden, by law “everyone shall have access to nature in accordance with allemansrätten“. Allemansrätten, translating to “the everyman’s right” is the right to walk and gather plants on land regardless of property ownership. We learn from a graduate student presenting on climate justice social research that the majority of Swedish people embrace this right and frequently visit forests. While there was a lot of pride in this equitable access to forests, there was also a recognition that, especially with some industrial forestry practices, there remain inequities in terms of who benefits from the forests. This is especially true for industrial practices like clearcutting, which can conflict with multifunctional values e.g. recreational and foraging also associated with forests.

We feel a strong sense of connection between Swedish people and the forest, though tensions between forest actors are highlighted in the research themes of the conference.

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This scene opens with the keynote talk from Dr. Juliette Biao, Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat (UNFSS) (and a fellow Canadian). Dr. Biao highlights the ties between the empowerment of women and forest resilience. We move back from the congress building to the forest south of Stockholm, where we hear from a collective of women forest owners about the challenges they have faced as women working in a male-dominated industry and the power they have found in starting a collective. Another collective of (mostly) women researchers fills a small room at the conference center for a session on feminist theories of care in forestry. ‘Care’ encompasses diverse understandings and practices of caretaking. Care is an “important means of understanding how people relate to the world, and the relationship between people and trees is no exception” (O’Flynn et al. 2021: 228).

As Dr. Juliette Biao highlighted in her keynote, women are underrepresented in forestry but are more likely to fall into the category of forest-dependent populations globally. While allemansrätten secures access rights to some benefits from forests, we heard from the Swedish Women Forest Owners that only 13% of forests are owned by women alone in Sweden, a much smaller percentage than men. There have been many shifts in discussions of gender in forestry over the last few decades, led largely by women like these presenters, who are pushing the conversation forward. However, in the session on care, the question as to why it is so skewed toward a women audience is raised by one of the only men in the audience. The empowerment of women and the concept of care are not topics of exclusive interest to women. In the session on care, PhD candidate Tuulikki Halla gave a talk describing how professional foresters (inclusive of all genders) in Finland both care for and feel care from forests in not just professional, but deeply personal ways. Care for forests is not unique to one gender or worldview, but as these talks illuminate, more diverse perspectives can make visible some of the emotions, histories, personal experiences, and other ways of understanding that can play important but under-emphasized roles in decision-making and conflict in forests.

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Our final scene opens in the massive exhibition hall, where much chatter makes it hard to listen deeply. However, we are still drawn to a talk by Dr. Heidi Rautiainen on her PhD research looking at Sámi reindeer husbandry, specifically on the impact of winter feeding, which is increasingly seen as a necessary climate change adaptation. We move back into the forest for a talk by Karin Nutti Pilflykt with the Saami Council and Tim Horstkotte, Umeå University, who tell us about the intricate connections between forest management practices, lichen availability, reindeer feeding, and Sámi rights. Industrial forestry practices, including dense tree planting, have changed the habitat for lichen, a critical food source for reindeer in Sápmi, the traditional territory of the Sámi. The scene ends with a presentation from a fellow Quebec PhD student, Laurence Boudreault, at Laval University, speaking about the W8banaki Nation’s forest stewardship and the challenges of adaptation for a cultural keystone species, Black Ash, associated with the largely privately owned landscape in their Territory. 

Research with the Sámi of Sápmi and the W8banaki of Ndakina present different but shared challenges associated with colonization and global challenges (climate change and the Emerald Ash Borer) which are threatening cultural keystone species. 

This scene ends on a note of hopeful collaborations between Indigenous communities initiating and leading research and academia to help discover potential routes forward for adapting practices and upholding responsibilities to relations like reindeer and ash. Read more about the reindeer feeding project here and the black ash project here.

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Credits:

I’m incredibly grateful to QCBS for the excellence award and NSERC ResNet HQP mobility awards that allowed me to attend this conference. It was an amazing experience that has expanded my understanding of how diverse but connected forest issues are globally.

About the author: Jackie Hamilton is a PhD candidate at McGill University in the Social Ecological Workshop (with professor Elena Bennett) and the Northern Wildlife Knowledges Lab (with professor Murray Humphries). Jackie is studying peoples’ relationships to trees in the Mont Saint Hilaire Biosphere Region, to contribute new ways to assess and account for more of the diverse values associated with trees. 

Twitter: @hamiltonjac

Linkedin: hamiltonjac