Competing discourses of the forest shape forest owners’ ideas about nature and biodiversity conservation

Competing discourses of the forest guide forest-owners’ ideas about the proper forest use and about the need to conserve biodiversity. In this paper, we examine how five predefined forest discourses (re)produced by Finnish forest owners treat nature and biodiversity conservation. Our critical discourse analysis combines qualitative content analysis with quantitative multivariate methods (NMDS). The data consists of in-depth interviews with 24 Finnish forest-owners. The five forest discourses formed a gradient from an absence of nature issues to a profound ecological pondering with deep affection and responsibility for nature. The discourses in between these two ends of the gradient contained narration on personal experiences but lacked the moral responsibility and deep theorizing typical of the nature-oriented discourse. The nature-oriented discourse proposed forest uses where the needs of nature were raised to a determining role whereas the other four discourses adhered to the standard economy-driven forest management paradigm. Both nature and the forest-owners with a strong relationship with nature appeared marginalised in the prevailing order of the forest discourses. The discoursal conditions that we evidenced did not favour biodiversity conservation among forest-owners. The results thus call for active forest policy that aims to transform the prevailing order of the discourses, but also tries to overcome the discoursal hinders for biodiversity conservation within the prevailing order.