integrating environmental policies into local practices: the politics of agri-environmental and...

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Integrating environmental policies intolocal practices: The politics of agri-environmental and energy policies inRural FinlandMaria Åkerman a , Minna Kaljonen b & Taru Peltola aa University of Tampere , Tampere, Finlandb Finnish Environment Institute , Helsinki, FinlandPublished online: 23 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Maria Åkerman , Minna Kaljonen & Taru Peltola (2005) Integratingenvironmental policies into local practices: The politics of agri-environmental and energy policiesin Rural Finland, Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 10:6,595-611, DOI: 10.1080/13549830500321725

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ARTICLE

Integrating Environmental Policiesinto Local Practices: The Politics ofAgri-environmental and Energy

Policies in Rural Finland

MARIA AKERMAN

University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

MINNA KALJONEN

Finnish Environment Institute, Helsinki, Finland

&

TARU PELTOLA

University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

ABSTRACT The paper focuses on the interplay between policy implementation andheterogeneous everyday social practices that, we argue, finally determine the successof environmental policies. We compare two empirical case studies to show how the

Local EnvironmentVol. 10, No. 6, 595–611, December 2005

Correspondence Address: Maria Akerman, Department of Regional Studies, FIN-33014University of Tampere, Finland. Email: [email protected]

1354-9839 Print=1469-6711 Online=05=060595-17 # 2005 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080=13549830500321725

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targets of international climate policy and the agri-environmental policy of the EU havebeen achieved in energy production and agriculture in rural Finland. The focus of ouranalysis is on the power effects of these policies at the level of local natural resourcemanagement practices. Our analysis revealed tensions that arose during theimplementation of the policies and showed that the policies modified the local actors’capacities to act. Therefore, we claim that policy practices should be analysed andappreciated as sites for the articulation of conflict and difference, as places of socialand cultural contestation.

Introduction

One of the main challenges of national and international environmentalregulation is to recruit local-level actors to fulfil set targets. In this article,we discuss two empirical cases to show how the targets of internationalclimate policy and the environmental policy of the EU have been achievedin energy production and agriculture in rural Finland. Our focus is on theinterplay between policy schemes and the heterogeneous everyday practicesthat finally determine the success of environmental policies.The goal of the Finnish energy policy has been to increase the share of

renewable energy by increasing the use of forest fuels from 0.8 Mm3 to5 Mm3 by the year 2010 (Ministry of Trade and Industry [MTI], 1999). Inagri-environmental policy the goal has been to support the production ofenvironmental goods and diminish the nutrient loads caused by agriculturalproduction by 50% (Ministry of Environment [MoE], 1998; Ministry ofAgriculture and Forestry [MAF], 1999a). Different indicators show thatthese two policies have been successful and widely adopted. The use offorest fuels in energy production plants and households has tripled sincethe year 2000, and reached 2.7 Mm3 in 2004 (Ylitalo, 2005). In addition,biofuels (including peat) recently became the primary source of energyrather than oil, with a 27% share of primary energy production (Tommila,2003). In agriculture, approximately 90% of all farms have signed up forthe agri-environmental programme and the use of fertilizers has decreased(MAF, 2004). But what do such aggregate indicators actually tell us aboutsustainability in practice?Both of the above-mentioned policies are based on the use of economic

instruments. They also provide new sources of income for agriculture andforestry, and can consequently have significant impact on livelihood inrural areas. Livelihood is related to the ability of local actors to obtain anddevelop different sources of income in the long run. The qualitative changesthat improve possibilities for economic action can also be called ‘economiccapacity’ (Jacobs, 2000) or ‘coping strategies’ (Aarsæther & Bærenholdt,2001, p. 23). As environmental policies affect local economic capacity, theyare connected with the ability of local people to influence and make decisionsabout how natural resources are used and managed. In recent debates on themanagement of rural natures it has been widely acknowledged that environ-mental policies may either be counterproductive in terms of economic andsocial sustainability, or provide a stimulus for new sources of sustainablelivelihood (e.g. Marsden et al., 2002). For the legitimacy of environmental

596 M. Akerman et al.

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policies, understanding of these kinds of dynamic livelihood impacts is ofcentral importance. The dynamic impacts of policies are, however, difficultif not impossible to evaluate in quantitative terms.Agri-environmental and energy policies are also characterized by the aim

to integrate ecological objectives into current natural resource managementpractices. They are based not on the protection of some geographical areabut on governing of independent actors’ interference with nature. Theenvironmental policies can thus be understood as an attempt to governlocal activities at a distance. In contrast to direct regulation, the idea ofthis kind of governing-at-distance refers to micro-level processes in whichlocal actors are persuaded to organize their action in line with broaderpolicy goals (see also Latour, 1987). The aim of the policies is to promotethe health of the environment and the living conditions of the rural popu-lation by spreading knowledge about environmentally sound practices andby offering economic incentives for independent actors to self-regulate theiractivities. In this sense, the types of agri-environmental and energy policieswe focus on in this article can be seen as an implication of a specific formof governmentality, which is often called environmentality (Darier, 1999;see also Foucault, 1991).In understanding such dynamic processes of environmentality we need to

focus our analysis on the policy practices. The understanding of practicesin analysing policy processes has been emphasized ever more prominentlyby several authors (e.g. Fischer & Forrester, 1993; Hajer & Wagenaar,2003; Aarsæther & Bærenholdt, 2001). The focus on policy practicesenables the study of the concrete organization of social and political life(Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003, p. 15) and reveals the dialogical character ofpolicymaking (Hinchliffe, 2001). It also directs attention to the linksbetween environmental knowledge and power relations, thus bringing forththe ways in which the world is negotiated in policy processes (Wynne,1996; Yanow, 1996).In this article we examine policy practices as ‘translation’. The use of the

translation metaphor is inspired by the actor-network approach (see e.g.Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987; 2004; Callon & Latour, 1981). ‘Translation’refers to a process in which actors in different situations try to tie in othersto fulfil common goals. The metaphor of translation helps to show howpolicy goals are transformed into action within a policy process. Forexample, findings related to the environmental impacts of agriculture orenergy production are produced in a specific context by certain scientificcommunities each of which has their own validation criteria. To create anyaction, these arguments must be circulated in other spheres. They mustbe translated into comprehensive policy goals accepted by the differentsectors, each of which has their own interests and traditions. Furthermore,if general policy goals or impact assessments are to affect productionpractices, they must be backed by specific knowledge about local naturalconditions, and then transformed into statements about the impacts of theproduction practices on these conditions. Meanwhile, they will have to be

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adapted to social conditions of farming or forestry, and to local productionpractices.The process of translation never leaves the field of action untouched. The

identities of actors are determined in relation to one another, consequentlydefining the actors’ possibilities for action. The translation of policy goalsinto practice may enforce constraining power structures or encourage the for-mation of new alliances between actors who may not have been in contactbefore. These alliances can stimulate or restrict new livelihood strategiesand local development in the long run.The article is based on a comparative analysis of two independent case

studies of wood-based energy production and agri-environmental policy.1

The socio-economic impacts of the use of wood fuels are evaluated on thebasis of a survey of wood fuel projects (Peltola, 2003), newspaper material(Akerman, 2005) and interviews with key actors, including heating entrepre-neurs, wood energy advisors, the forest industry and municipalities (Peltola,2005; Akerman & Janis, 2005). Research on agri-environmental policyimplementation is based on a case study from Southern Ostrobothnia inwestern Finland. In addition to various policy documents, the empiricalmaterial consists of interviews with the agricultural and environmental auth-orities, advisors and farmers, as well as a farmer survey (Kaljonen, 2002;2003; 2006).The article begins with description of the policy processes through which

favourable conditions for new energy production practices were createdand changes in conventional agricultural production were introduced. Wecontinue by contrasting these relatively smooth policy processes throughpractical examples of unanticipated policy outcomes. We discuss the effectsof the outcomes in terms of knowledge production and capacities to act inenvironmental management. Finally, we focus on strategies that haveenabled actors to widen their opportunities to act within the existing policyframeworks. To conclude, we align the case studies with the debate on thepolitics of environmental policies.

Governing Local Practices

Forestry and agriculture have traditionally been closely related in Finland,and together they have formed the basis of income for Finnish farmingcommunities. During the 1990s both sectors diminished significantly, andthis development affected the livelihoods of rural areas in a profound way(Niemi & Ahlstedt, 2005). As a consequence, Finland experienced an inten-sive period of rural depopulation (Katajamaki, 1999). The policy processesfor agri-environmental management and wood fuel production that will bedescribed below were implemented simultaneously in rural areas of Finlandduring the 1990s. Due to the difficult economic situation, these policiesaimed to integrate environmental goals into the strengthening of the eco-nomies of rural areas (e.g. Jokinen, 2000). A characteristic of both policieswas that they were marketed to different actors with the use of win–winrhetoric: everybody would benefit if as many actors as possible participated.


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The implementation process was thus based on drawing linkages betweenactors who had not previously cooperated by redefining their goals in sucha way that a common interest could be identified.The strategies to promote the use of wood energy brought together a wide

range of actors from theMinistry of Trade and Industry andMinistry of Agri-culture and Forestry to environmental organizations, forest companies andfarmers. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has directed funding for renew-able energy pilot projects, and regards wood fuels as a means to reducecarbon dioxide emissions (MTI, 1999). The Ministry of Agriculture and For-estry, which aims to encourage thinning of young, growing forests to improvefuture yield, has directed a certain proportion of its sustainable forestryfunding for the production of wood fuels from young forest stands (MAF,1999b). Additionally, wood energy projects in Regional Forestry Centreshave been funded by the EU structural funds, since the use of wood fuels iswidely praised as a new source of income in rural areas. Wood fuels arethus perceived to offer a solution to various problems ranging from forestmanagement and local development to curbing air pollution and meetinginternational environmental commitments.The practical enrolment of different actors into fulfilling the targets of

wood energy policies has led to two different ways of organizing the pro-duction chains. Since the mid-1990s, part of government funding (invest-ment subsidies and subsidies for the production of fuel) has been used topromote the rise of small-scale heating businesses that provide heating ser-vices for municipalities at the local level. More than 150 heating businesseshave been founded since the mid 1990s and they operate more than 212heating units with a total power of 100 MW (Nikkola & Solmio, 2004).Wood fuel production was thereby integrated into other rural productionpractices such as farming, family forestry or logging contracting andbased on the use of existing harvesting or agricultural machinery(Akerman & Janis, 2005). These activities take place locally: the distanceof wood fuel harvesting is usually short (often less than 30 km). A heatingbusiness rarely functions as a main occupation, yet it can provide an import-ant additional income for farmers and therefore serve the idea of developingmultifunctionality in agricultural production (see also Lowe et al., 2002).Simultaneously with the promotion of small scale heating activities, the

Finnish government also launched a technology programme for the develop-ment of large scale utilization of wood energy (Tekes, 2003).While the aim ofencouraging small businesses was mainly related to rural development andforest management targets, the promotion of large-scale activities aimed toalign international climate policy goals with business strategies of multi-national forest companies (Peltola, 2005). The Finnish forest industryalready had a long tradition of utilizing bioenergy, particularly in the formof waste by-products such as black liquor, but in the late 1990s it developednew harvesting methods that enabled the use of forest fuels as well.2 Forestcompanies have integrated wood fuel production into their existing industrialraw material production chains, infrastructure and equipment or developedthe production of wood fuels through their subsidiaries.


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Also in agriculture the environmental goals have been implemented byaligning the goals of various actors. In this arena, currently the most import-ant policy instrument in Finland is the agri-environmental programme (MAF,1999a). It is based on the idea of agriculture as a producer of environmentalgoods that the state should pay for. These principles are laid down in thecommon framework of European agricultural policy (EEC, 1992; EC,1999). The means for agri-environmental management are defined ingeneral and special protection schemes based on voluntary farm-level con-tracts offering economic support for investments and loss of income.3 TheFinnish interpretation of the agri-environmental programme emphasizesrural well-being and water protection, thereby following the previousnational policy approaches (Jokinen, 2000). The policy model has beenamong the most extensive in the EU (e.g. Buller et al., 2000).The related principles of agri-environmental policies suggest that farmers

wishing to protect nature should enrol in agri-environmental schemes andfollow the set management practices. This is in the interests of many:farmers get support enabling them to continue agricultural productionwhile keeping rural areas viable. Most Finnish farmers have indeed realizedthis. Largely due to the importance of the support to farm income, some90% of Finnish farms are enrolled in the general protection scheme (MAF,2004, pp. 31–34). For example, in southern and western Finland the shareof support in farm income may vary from 35% to 53% in cereal farms andfrom 15% to 35% in livestock farms (Koikkalainen & Lankoski, 2004).The wide coverage of the programme should also be in the interest of theenvironment, lakes, rivers and the Baltic Sea. Furthermore, at a higher policy-making level, the policy has allowed the Finnish state to compensate fordeclining agricultural incomes and promote the welfarist ideal of equalitybetween different production sectors and regions (Jokinen, 2002; see alsoGranberg, 1999).Both the agri-environmental schemes and the promotion of the use of

wood energy can thus be seen as attempts to invoke alliances betweenfarmers and forest owners, the environmental or agricultural adminis-tration and, implicitly, nature. Yet the success of both policies in reachingtheir respective goals largely depends on whether both natural and humanentities act in accordance with the roles designated for them. In the case ofagri-environmental policy, the nutrients should not run off the fields andfarmers should follow agri-environmental management practices andproduce environmental goods in addition to foodstuffs. In the case ofwood energy, the fuel should run smoothly from forests to power plantsin order to guarantee a steady supply of energy, and the farmers andforest companies should be able to start and maintain a profitable business.

Micro-level Translation of Policies

Description of the policy processes on a general level shows a straightforwardprocess in which the behaviour of local actors is governed by aligning thegoals of various actors: forest owners and forest companies start to organize


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fuel production chains and farmers enter the agri-environmental schemes—the result being a healthier environment. A closer look at everydayproduction practices, however, breaks the picture of a smooth process,since the translation of policy goals into production practices may produceunanticipated outcomes. This is well illustrated by the two empiricalexamples in our case studies.Our first example shows how local investment in wood energy may

produce contradictory results from the perspective of the actors who takepart in the policy process. In Outokumpu, a small town in eastern Finland,the local power company decided to invest in a new energy productionunit in 2001. The idea was to enable the use of wood fuels instead of oiland to produce heat for the local district heating network and power forthe electricity grid. Local forest owners welcomed this investment, since itwas expected to increase the demand for small-sized timber otherwiseignored by the forest industry. The forest owners founded a heating business,and made an offer to supply fuel for the new plant. However, a competitorappeared when the national fuel company Vapo (owned partly by theforest company Metsaliitto) made a more attractive offer to supply fuel atvery low prices. The local cooperative could not compete, and the localfarmers and forest owners lost their opportunity to gain more income.Vapo’s offer was based on greater volumes and an efficient logisticalsystem that enabled the transportation of wood fuel from further away—even from Russia. In principle, the investment decision was in line with thegeneral policy goals of increasing the use of wood biomass and decreasingCO2 emissions. However, none of the desired effects on local livelihoodbecame evident.Our second example clarifies the complexities of agri-environmental

management and policy. Since most farms have enlarged their manurestorage facilities, and more restrictions have been placed on the dates whenmanure may be applied and the places where manure hills may be used,many farms have changed to spreading manure in the spring instead ofautumn (Pyykkonen et al., 2004, p. 16). This should be a positive develop-ment in terms of reduced environmental impacts. However, as fields onFinnish farms are typically small and often located relatively far away fromone another, the busy springtime has forced many farmers to start spreadingmanure or slurry onto the ‘home fields’ which are nearest to their farm andbarn. These fields tend to have already rather high nutrient contentswhereas the more distant fields are neglected, leading to problems with nutri-ent depletion. This is not in the best interest of the environment. The problemwill accentuate if the regional concentration of livestock farms continues, ashas been envisaged due to the structural changes within the agriculturalsector (Lehtonen et al., 2005).Both examples illustrate situations where the eventual outcomes of the

policies do not match up to the policy goals. Events in Outokumpu showthat although wood fuel is often considered a local resource, centralizedand distanced production chains may dominate the market. Wood fuel iswidely used, promoted and developed by a variety of actors who each have


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their own strategies, practices and goals,which are not always in linewith eachother. This differentiation of production practices has not been acknowledgedby the promoters of wood energy. Similarly, if agri-environmental policiesoverlook the social organization of farming work—the context in whichenvironmental management takes place—new regulations may fail to meettheir goals, at worst even lead to negative side effects.The final outcomes of policies are dependent on the ways in which the

policy goals are translated into production practices, i.e. what kinds oflinks between actors, practices and knowledge are created. In this respect,the policy processes in agri-environmental management and wood fuelproduction differ from one another. While in wood fuel production theunpredictability of the policy outcomes is a result of the development ofcompeting translations and different ways of organizing the productionpractices, in agri-environmental policy the source of uncertainty lies in thedifficulty of aligning administrative practices with farming practices.

Politics of Local Knowledge

The contradictory outcomes of the policies are related to differing ways ofinterpreting rural livelihood and environmental management. There aremultiple understandings of how and on what scale production should beorganized and the environment managed. Answering these questions forcesthe different actors involved to make stand on what should be consideredvalid knowledge for taking care of the environment.The hegemonic way to discuss energy issues in the Finnish energy sector is

in terms of efficiency. This discourse seems to favour large-scale energyproduction, as supported by Finland’s long history of industrial forest useand centralized energy production. Decentralized small-scale energy pro-duction was mainly seen as a curiosity in national energy strategies, inwhich the main interest was in securing the production of cheap electricityfor energy-intensive export industries: the chemical forest industry and thesteel industries (Vehmas, 1995). These targets are deeply embedded inFinland’s energy production system, from the training of engineers rightthrough to the design of existing heating and power plants. Until the begin-ning of the 1990s, wood fuels were also considered unpractical amongengineers due to the underdeveloped combustion technologies and unreliablefuel supply chains that had been applied in small-scale heating plants inthe 1980s. Additionally, the long history of industrial forestry has led tothe development of an extensive structure of industrial forest use which hasleft little room for independent small businesses to develop (e.g. Palo, 1993).Using efficiency as a criterion to evaluate renewable energy, large-scale

wood fuel production has been prioritized in energy policy. A clearexample of the use of the efficiency discourse is the translation of loggingresidues, which had previously been neglected waste into the ‘biomassreserve’ of the 1990s—a precious resource that can be efficiently usedto boost the energy supply (Akerman, 2005). Forest companies havesuccessfully used this metaphor to legitimize their claim that forest owners


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should, as part of logging contracts, donate their logging residues for use inlarge-scale energy production. Given that approximately 80% of the timberflow is purchased and cut by the major forest companies in Finland (Peltola,2003), forest fuel production should support the goals of forest industry.However, the recent interpretation of energy production in terms of local live-lihood includes claims that heating entrepreneurs—as independent wood fuelproducers—represent the new pride and technical potential of rural areas(Akerman, 2005). This new model, which encourages local use of naturalresources, challenges the conventional model in which local livelihood isdependent on and subject to the development of large forest industries andinternational paper markets. The model suggests that it would be unwise toundermine the conditions for small-scale wood energy production from theviewpoint of wasting important potential for local development.Also in the case of agri-environmental policy, the scale of activities is of

central importance. The environmental impacts of agriculture are causedby non-point-source pollution. Hence, reducing nutrients in one field is notnecessarily enough: the actions need to be carried out extensively and overa long period of time. From this point of view, the nationwide coverage ofthe general protection schemes and the changes these have brought aboutfor example to fertilization practices seem to be successful. However, theproposed management practices will only be effective insofar as the requiredconditions can be repeated effectively in every field. There are many short-comings in this respect (Pyykkonen et al., 2004), as shown also in theexample of the use of dungheaps.The tensions between the scales of agri-environmental management

are clearly seen in the criticism voiced by farmers. They claim that the agri-environmental policy has neglected the local ecological and social conditionsof farming both in terms of social organization of work and in terms of ecologi-cal variation. This way of criticizing agri-environmental schemes bondstogether the otherwise rather heterogeneous groupof farmers (Kaljonen, 2006).Farmers’ responses directly challenge the standardization built into general

accounts of good farming practices. The quantitative and universal elementsof agri-environmental schemes contradict farmers’ practically orientatedknowledge of ‘living one’s field’ (ibid.), which emphasizes variations anduncertainties in, for instance, soil conditions, weather, cultivated plants,family labour, production prices and subsidies. This variability is a reflectionof building diversity into practice, adaptively coping with the multiple dimen-sions to be taken into account in farming (see van der Ploeg, 1993). Farmersassume predictability to be intrinsically unreliable as a key part of theircultural identity and practical knowledge. Multidimensionality is taken forgranted; furthermore, it cannot be codified. ‘It is just life,’ as one intervieweddairy farmer put it.Policy principles suggest that, as farmers are first and foremost food

producers, they need to be paid for using their craftsmanship for otherforms of public good, namely healthier environment. The policy principleschallenge the ideal of farming as an activity that takes care of its environ-ment per se. Farmers are seen to possess the agricultural skills necessary for


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agri-environmental management, but they are also identified as beingunaware of the environmental impacts of their practices and ignorantabout how they should look after the environment properly. In this interpret-ation, farming skills are equated with knowledge about agriculture, whereasscience is equated with knowledge about nature and environmental impacts.(See also Burgess et al., 2000.)Farmers counter this policy translation by emphasizing that agri-

environmental management practices must be adjusted to the local contextof farming and rural areas. Although the farmers interviewed acknowledgethe environmental impacts caused by the technological development ofproduction, they simultaneously tend to cling to the ideal of a respectfulrelationship between agriculture and nature (see also Silvasti, 2003).Farmers argue that it is their very farming skills that also make them ableenvironmental managers.

Building the Capacities to Act

The contradictions of the policy processes imply that the implementation ofthe policies was indeed an open-ended process. Due to differing interests ofthe actors, who were also engaged in different practices and had severalmutually exclusive ways to organize action, the policy agendas opened upa whole new field of definitions and power struggles. Both farmers andsmall heating businesses are trying to create advantages for themselvesthrough their place-bound experience, local knowledge and materialengagements.The question arises whether the implementation of agri-environmental

policy has politicized local knowledge in a new manner. A tightened environ-mental policy alongside structural changes in agriculture caused by Finland’sjoining the EU and its common agricultural markets has increased amongfarmers the feeling of decisions being made top-down and ever more remotely(see Kaljonen & Rikkonen, 2004). In this situation, basing their argumentson their knowledge about local conditions offers farmers an alternativeroute for claiming their rights to natural resource management. Complaintsabout agri-environmental schemes and bureaucracy may also serve as adiscursive way of building a community of farmers to protect an image ofsolidarity and unity against outside threats.Farmers are the spokespersons for their own fields. Interestingly, they seem

to construct their knowledge of living one’s field into a ‘black box’ (Callon &Latour, 1981) of information that is only available to them. In this manner,they can try to keep others, e.g. environmental officials or inspectors, off theirfields. This discourse allows them to keep nature, and decisions regarding itsuse and management, on the farm. It may also imply that farmers want tokeep environmental policy at the end of the field and leave alone the moreprofound questions about the environmental impacts of agro-technologicaldevelopment and different production styles.However, as the results of the case study have shown, farmers’ discourse

also involves profound criticism of the means and scales of agri-environmental


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management (see also Kaljonen, 2003). They argue that the policy shouldgive greater recognition to the importance of local ecological and socialconditions and in so doing support the use of farmers’ local knowledge in agri-environmental management. The identity of an environmental manageroffered by the agri- environmental policy looks rather one-dimensional. Theschemes do not promote any voluntary actions for environmental protection;they simply force farmers to follow the standard rule. This is further enforcedby the farmers’ position in the European Common Agricultural Policy as awhole.Compared with farmers, small heating businesses have gained more

capacities to act within the renewable energy policy scheme. They havebeen able to occupy a niche outside the standardized industrial productionand operate in forests that are unattractive to large forest companies. Further-more, the nationwide problem of unmanaged young forests has allowed localforest owners to claim government funding for collecting and chipping woodfuel. So far, the larger-scale forest industry has not been interested in theseforests, since the harvesting of the young forest areas is labour intensiveand cannot easily be integrated into their mechanized harvesting systems.Importantly, small businesses have also managed quite well to engage inenergy production in small municipalities where their discursive strategiesare appealing and they are supported by personal networks.From the forest owners’ perspective, the situation is, however, complicated

due to the various funding schemes for wood energy having enabled differentdefinitions of their economic position. They may equally well contribute tothe bioenergy goals by acting as independent heating entrepreneurs or bygiving clear-cutting residues (usually for free) when selling industrial timberto a forest company. This choice has direct income effects, but, more signifi-cantly, affects the forest owner’s possibilities to act. Within the latter trans-lation, the forest owner is reduced to being merely the provider of the rawmaterial. The forest owners are expected to follow recommended forestmanagement routines to efficiently produce resources for forest companiesand not to utilize the resource base for their own purposes (except forminor domestic uses). Thus, integration of forest fuel production to industrialtimber production further strengthens the conventional role of forest ownersin the forestry sector: they are not expected to make decisions about the use ofnatural resources, these decisions having traditionally been guided by theFinnish forest policy and the needs of the forest industry (e.g. Jokinen, inpress; Bjorn, 2000; Kuisma, 1993).The struggles in both wood fuel production and agriculture focus on the

positions of farmers and forest owners and their possibilities to act withinalternative translations. New policies—and hence emerging fields of powerstruggle—always enter a pre-existing setting of established practices and pro-duction systems. Translations of these policies are based on pre-existingmaterial and social structures, while also challenging them. Therefore,increasing renewable energy requires more than just technological develop-ment and standardized working procedures. In fact, the organization oflocal heating activities has required the redefinition of the economic relations


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within forestry in such a way that a forest owner is able to make decisionsabout the use of forest resources independently from the goals of forestindustry. Likewise, producing environmental goods in agriculture is notjust a matter of adopting a certain recommended practice; rather it involvesa complex reorganization of several farming routines. The policy has,however, been incapable of recognizing and incorporating the value of‘invisible’ farm work and local ecological variations. Due to a confusion ofscale, the agri-environmental policies offer rather limited capacities to actfor farmers.

Escaping the Trap of the Local: Stretched Knowledges and Practices

Farmers and forest owners stress the importance of experience-based knowl-edge and local conditions to strengthen their agency as environmental man-agers. It is also a cultural response to a cultural form of intervention thatembodies a particular set of normative models regarding the relationshipbetween human activities and nature (Wynne, 1996, p. 67). However,sticking to local experiences and local knowledge bases is not necessarilythe best tactic for forest owners and farmers. Farmers restrict their agencyonly to their own fields and farms. Small heating businesses may alsolimit their action to their closest surroundings, making them not onlyvulnerable to techno-economic changes but also uncompetitive in com-parison with the extensive production chains of larger fuel companies.Fortunately, the tension between localized production practices on the onehand and ubiquitous practices of governing or operators acting on a muchlarger spatial scale, on the other, is not permanently fixed.Local producers are not only passive objects in the policy implementation

process but active partners in ensuring that a successful translation can bereached (see also Clark &Murdoch, 1997). Both policy processes scrutinizedhere included interactive policy practices through which the dialoguebetween local actors and broader policy schemes has started to modify theimplementation of the policies. The formation of shared understandingsacross organizational or functional boundaries has enhanced the formationof ‘stretched’ knowledges and brought dispersed practices together inunusual and fruitful ways (Allen, 2000). Such interactive policy processesincluded the regional-level wood energy projects to promote sustainableforestry and entrepreneurship in rural areas as well as the various environ-mental projects to support the agri-environmental schemes.The aim of the wood fuel projects of Regional Forestry Centres is to

fulfil sustainable forestry goals by using energy production as an incentive.As a consequence, a new type of expertise has been created within theseforestry advisory organizations based on a nationwide network of woodenergy advisors—a new professional group (Peltola, 2003). The newprofessionals have combined knowledge in forestry and energy production:the economics of small-scale heating, forest management, local conditionsand public funding systems. Although the economic and technologicalknowledge developed and circulated through the network has its origins in


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local experiences with local heating systems, it can also move to different con-texts. For instance, knowledge about how to improve competitivenessthrough practical arrangements and contracts has spread efficiently fromone place to another, making the heating businesses stronger than before.This has helped small businesses to compete with larger wood fuel producers.Moreover, the circulation of knowledge between local and non-local actorshas connected heating businesses to national actors. The connections tothese actors have made local businesses seem more reliable and haveincreased trust between local actors, for instance between the municipalityand the local heating business.In agriculture, the riparian zone plans carried out for various river and

lake watersheds (especially in the southern and western Finland) providean illustrative example of how universal and localized accounts of agri-environmental management have been mixed in a fruitful way. The planningis based on the identification of environmentally critical areas and materializ-ing them on amap format, which allows extending the scale of environmentalmanagement from separate technical solutions to watershed-level actions.The experiences gained indicate that watershed-level planning has helped totake into account locally varying environmental conditions, and in sodoing has offered farmers channels to participate and utilize their experi-ence-based knowledge about farming and the local environment. Farmers’engagement in their local environment as well as with the long networksof science has allowed them to identify themselves as knowledgeableactors in areas where claims based on local understanding in many respectsoutweigh the more universal claims of other actors such as the environmentalauthorities (Kaljonen, 2003).The stretching of knowledge and interaction beyond the local sphere has a

key role in strengthening the position of local actors. By gaining allies thatenable them to act on a larger spatial scale local actors are able to affectsocio-economic relations outside the local sphere while simultaneously estab-lishing or reinforcing their position at the local level. This also implies thatlocal and universal knowledge should not be regarded as different a priori.Natural resource management practices rely on both types of knowledge,and in practice the distinction between them is blurred.

The Politics of Environmental Policies

Maarten Hajer (2003; see also Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003) has argued thatpolicy implementation seems to have acquired new significance in society:it is no longer about the execution of political decision; nowadays it isoften constitutive of politics. Consequently, the division between politics asnegotiation of common targets and policies as implementation gets blurred.By highlighting the power effects of the policy practices, our case studiesshow that there is a need to further develop understanding of the politicsof environmental policies. Policy practices should not simply be analysedwith goals of effective implementation in mind; they should also be analysed


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and indeed appreciated as sites for the articulation of conflict and difference,as a place of social and cultural contestation.In our case studies the contested nature of policy practices was more appar-

ent in agri-environmental policy than in wood energy. The tensions betweenthe different translations of wood energy seemed to vanish in the blind spotbetween the administrative sectors. Two different administrative sectors areresponsible for forestry and local livelihood goals related to small-scaleheating activities and, on the other hand, energy and climate policy relatedto large-scale wood energy production. Consequently, the tensions betweenthe scales of action do not become articulated at the level of national policies.However, the focus on the practical organization of the activities showedthe landscape of power-laden economic relations. Likewise, in the case ofagriculture, focusing on the translation of policy principles into farming prac-tices revealed a kind of resistance that derives directly from the cultivationpractices and social organization of work on the farms. The analysis alsorevealed the tight connection between the different actors’ capacities to actand the kind of knowledge that is regarded as valid within the policy process.The focus on policy practices thus helps to draw attention to the tensions

that may arise during the implementation processes. The tensions reveal con-stellations of power that are created or modified by the policies. The powerrelations, and changes in them, help to understand why and how the policyprocesses take the direction they take. The identification of power effects isa challenge especially in cases like wood fuel production in which the tensionsor the power effects seem not to be so obvious. Practical understanding ofpolicies helps to translate them into action. The riparian zone planning inagriculture offers a positive example of how local- and policy-level concernscan be brought together in a way that has enhanced local-level actors’capacities to act.

Acknowledgements

Financial support from the research programme ‘Sustainable Use of NaturalResources’ of the Academy of Finland made it possible to carry out the casestudies. The work within the programme also encouraged us to go forwardwith the comparative approach. We thank Professor Yrjo Haila, ProfessorMikael Hilden and anonymous referees for their comments and correctionsas well as Aili Pyhala for checking the English of the final manuscript.

Notes

[1] The article is a summary of the results of two extensive research projects funded by the research pro-

gramme ‘Sustainable Use of Natural Resources’ of the FinnishAcademy.Detailed analyses of the cases

as well as more detailed discussion on the methods are available in the references provided below.[2] In 2001, municipal heating and power plants used about 72% of total forest fuel consumption in

Finland, with forest industry accounting for the remaining 28% (Hakkila, 2002).

[3] A farm enrolled in a general protection scheme has to follow set fertilization levels, take soil analysesevery five years, keep an annual cultivation plan and construct headlands and filter strips. In addition

to water protection, some requirements for plant protection, biodiversity and landscape management


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are included. Hence, the scheme describes the general requirements for agri-environmental manage-ment practices and is nationwide in its scope. The special protection schemes, by contrast, consist of

more focused measures for environmental protection, providing financial support for covering the

investment and management costs of, for instance the construction of riparian zones, wetlands or tra-

ditional biotopes. The regional environmental and agricultural administration is in charge of theschemes’ implementation and decision-making. In addition, advisors participate in the implemen-

tation by arranging courses and carrying out environmental plans at the farm level.

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integrating environmental policies into local practices: the politics of agri-environmental and...

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