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This paper considers the problem of designing PES-type contracts to encourage participation and spatial coordination amongst private forest owners in Finland. The aim of the policy is to increase efforts to mitigate risks from invasive forest pests and diseases. Such control actions yield spill-over benefits to other landowners and to wider society, meaning that the level of privately-optimal disease control is likely to be less than the socially-optimal level. The policy designer may wish to encourage spatial coordination in the uptake of such PES-type contracts, as spatial coordination delivers an increase in the effectiveness of control measures on disease risks. We conducted a choice experiment with private forest owners in Finland in October 2016. The study elicited the preferences of woodland owners with respect to the design of forest disease control contracts, and gauged their willingness to cooperate with neighbouring forest owners within the framework of such programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecosystem services literature rests on the premise that an increased understanding of ecosystems, ecosystem services and, in particular, the value of ecosystem services will feed to decision-making. Yet, there is little evidence for the assumed demand and applicability of valuation knowledge in real-life policy and decision-making processes, and the use of such knowledge has received little in-depth analytical attention. Motivated by these observations, we have conducted an empirical analysis of ecosystem service value knowledge use. Our analysis of policy actors' experiences and expectations regarding value knowledge in Finland's peatland policy draws on ten interviews with eleven policy actors. Focusing on the usefulness and uses of valuation knowledge, we analyze the ways in which values are framed and value knowledge is expected to influence the rights to use ecosystem services. Our analysis shows that policy actors expect a better understanding of ecosystem service values to support the consideration of benefits. Yet, what they view as crucial knowledge needs aligns with their sectoral or organizational position as well as the interests they represent. Hence, valuation does not provide a solution to distributional debates or conflicts over rights, but it can have an important function as the provider of background knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Deliberative environmental policy links the formal institutional setting within which environmental policy takes place and the informal ways of thinking and doing by those whose daily work the policy influences. Despite an extensive theoretically oriented literature on policy deliberation, little methodological advice exists relating deliberation to the two domains it aims to link, i.e., the formal and informal institutions. In this paper, we develop a methodology for environmental policy deliberation that is grounded in institutional theory and theories explaining the cognitive practices of individuals in action situations. The methodology has three stages. First, we outline the problem setting on the basis of the stakeholders'' mental model analysis. Second, more specific research problems and proposed solutions are formulated collaboratively with researchers from different fields. Third, the hypotheses are tested and challenged in a workshop with the interviewed stakeholders and re-formulated into final institutional recommendations. We illustrate the success of the procedure with a case study on a regional industrial complex located in the Bothnian Arc of northern Finland. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper explores the role of natural resource accounting and calculations as tools for inducing movement towards ecologically sound policy making. We draw from the theoretical debates in social studies of science and technology (STS) to understand how calculations gain their power in real-world decision-making. Through in-depth case analysis of a local energy production decision in Finland, we study how and under what conditions calculative methods related to environmental valuation affect the rationalities applied in policy decisions. On the basis of our analysis, we claim that new calculative rationalities do not become significant through changing ways of thinking alone. There is a need for shift of calculative framing. This shift requires active promotion by powerful actors and furthermore, new framings need to become embedded in the rules of the game of decision making. Our analysis suggests that the methods of STS can provide a valuable tool for economists’ creation of richer understanding of the dynamics between calculative rationalities and the institutions of decision-making. In-depth case analysis of decision making involving the use of natural resources brings out the multitude of ways in which calculations can take part in or be excluded from the making of natural resource policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]