Abstract
This study analyzes the Swedish National Forest Program in terms of the relationship between forest and environmental administration, reasons for setting it as a policy agenda, and the role of key actors in setting the framework for policy decisions in the policy process, based on the results of previous studies, published documents, and interviews with key actors. The Swedish National Forest Program took five years to reach a policy decision because the council responsible for coordinating the actors’interests and drafting the final proposal was composed of members from environment-oriented organizations, including environmental NGOs and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, and industry-oriented organizations, including the Swedish Forest Agency and the wood industry. The conflict was between the former, who had political bargaining power due to the public disclosure of clear-cutting practices in FSC-certified forests due to violations of the standard, and the latter, who had long been the industry-government-academia partnership supporting the Swedish forest industry. In the policy-making process for the Swedish National Forest Program, the national forest science research project“Future Forests”proposed a framework based on scientific
knowledge of the sustainable ecosystem services provided by forests and a participatory approach to policy development. This study indicated that the implementation of a similar research project would contribute to the formulation of future forest policies, given the increasing number of companies interested in forest management and government agencies involved in forestry in Japan.
