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At the international policy level, there is a clear link between access to information about forests and the work towards sustainable land use. However, involving forests in planning for sustainable development (SuD) at the Swedish local level, by means of municipal comprehensive planning (MCP), is complicated by sector structure and legislation. Currently, there is a gap or hole in the MCP process when it comes to use and access to knowledge about forest conditions and forest land use. This hole limits the possibilities to formulate well-informed municipal visions and goals for sustainable forest land use as well as for overall SuD. Here we introduce an approach for compilation and presentation of geographic information to increase the preconditions for integrating forest information into Swedish MCP. We produce information about forest ownership patterns and forest conditions in terms of age and significant ecological and social values in forests for a case study municipality. We conclude that it is possible to effectively compile geographic and forest-related information to fill the hole in the municipal land use map. Through our approach, MCP could be strengthened as a tool for overall land use planning and hence as a base in SuD planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong land-use pressure challenges sustainable development and calls for landscape approaches that balance economic, ecological, and socio-cultural aspects and interests. In the boreal, sub-alpine, and alpine regions in Sweden, encompassing 32 million ha, many and different land-use interests overlap, which causes risks for conflict, but potentially also suggests integration and synergy opportunities. Based on geographic information system (GIS) analyses of geographically delineated national interests regulated in the Swedish Environmental Code, including, amongst others, Natura 2000, contiguous mountains, recreation, reindeer husbandry, and wind power, and based on forestry as a dominating land use, we found extensive overlap among similar but also between dissimilar types of interest. In some mountain municipalities, our results show that the designated national interest area is four times as large as the available terrestrial area. Moreover, the overlap is much higher in the alpine than in the boreal biome, and there is increasing designation for nature conservation and a decreasing designation for national interests for culture, recreation, and tourism from south to north. We interpret the results with reference to multiple-use needs and opportunities for landscape approaches to sustainable planning. Departing from biodiversity conservation values, we also discuss opportunities to focus planning strategies on assessing synergy, integration, and conflict based on nature-based and place-based land-use characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden's mountain areas are sensitive ecosystems that are used by a wide range of stakeholders, and this raises multiple sustainability concerns. Collaborative governance solutions are becoming increasingly common in such situations to promote more sustainable practices. While the Swedish mountain area is indeed a hot spot for different forms of public–private partnerships (PPPs) related to natural resources management, as yet, little is known about the shaping of participation, leadership, and implementation of these processes. What are the drivers for implementing collaborative environmental partnerships, do the drivers differ, and if so, how? What role does the specific context play in the design of these PPPs? Are the PPPs useful, and if so, for what? To analyze those issues, we conducted 38 semi-structured interviews with project leaders from a sample randomly selected from a database of 245 public–private collaborative projects in the Swedish mountains. Our results indicate that consequential incentives in the form of funding and previous successful collaborations seem to be the major drivers for such partnerships. A critical discussion of the possibilities and limitations of public–private forms of governance in rural mountain areas adds to the ongoing debate on the performance of environmental PPPs in a regional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]