Identifying Land Conflict Risk Zones Between Reindeer Herding and Forestry

Abstract

Land use conflicts occur between reindeer herding and forestry industry among other factors due to the way forestry affects the pastures. In Finland there have been reoccurring land use conflicts between practitioners of these two livelihoods and despite efforts to resolve these conflicts, no sustainable solution have been made. This thesis studies how spatial conservation prioritisation (SCP) analysis can be used to assess land use conflicts in context of disputes between reindeer herding and forestry sector in Northern Lapland. I used survey data from eight stakeholders and experts on the subject together with topographic data from SYKE (Finnish Environmental Institute) to study which areas are more at risk of land use conflicts between the land-use types in Paatsjoki reindeer herding cooperative area. The risk factors for land use conflicts were determined by prior research on the subject. The study shows that risk factors for land use conflict are concentrated in multi-purpose forestry areas as opposed to protected areas where they are mostly absent, indicating the effect of land use regime on the emergence of land use conflicts. Further research on the subject would be needed on land conflicts in areas where privately owned forests and reindeer herding pasture areas overlap. Furthermore, future research is needed on interaction between social, environmental and governance dynamics of land-use conflicts.