Negotiating multifunctional landscapes: a pilot model in the mountains of Jämtland

The project is about turning ideas into reality in collaboration with local and national mountain stakeholders, for example, how to organize, manage and fund future trail system.

Challenges
The mountain landscape is overexploited as well as underutilized. The project’s starting point and challenge is to make multifunctional use possible, combining sustainable living for locals and public use with a profitable regional industry and ambitious environmental goals relating to natural and cultural environment.

Aim
The project aims to explore flexible forms of natural and cultural conservation where values warranting protection can be combined with consideration for local needs, development of experience values, and tourism. The project will also investigate how to organize and fund future trails. Central to  the project is the use of an expanded trail concept including more than current physical trails, which is useful in discussions about various forms of nature conservation such as the current discussion  about a national park in the area.

Benefits
To decrease the risk of conflicts between the different mountain interests and stakeholders and at the same time increase the experience value of the mountain landscape, efficient methods are important. The development and evaluation of these methods take place in close collaboration with local, regional and national mountain actors. The idea is to achieve a result that can be translated to other parts of the mountains, and be of use in future mountain management. The results will be useful for politicians, managers, and planners.

The project includes researchers from Mid Sweden University, Stockholm University and KTH. The project is a part of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s research initiative “A Magnificent Mountain Landscape”, based on three ongoing projects in the initiative.