Speculative Futures of Forest-dependent Livelihoods

Exploring alternatives to economic growth in Finnish forests

Kainuu is a heavily forested region in North-Eastern Finland. The complexity of resource extraction and challenges associated with sustainable livelihoods and practices has interested me for a long time and is a discussion that often is dominated by economic justifications for increased resource extraction despite rising socio-ecological impacts. Forests are especially an interesting issue as they are one of the most abundant resources and type of landscape in Finland, and so have been very important materially, culturally and economically.

In this sense, Kainuu seemed like a good fit to focus on for the topic of diversifying forest-based livelihoods given its long history with forestry, it has a mix of private and state-owned forests, many protected/commercial areas, it has strong ties to global timber trade, and it has already been exploring diversifying its economy through things like ecotourism.

Challenge

Like many regions throughout Finland and other post-industrial nations, Kainuu is quite modern and has been shaped by the same globalizing forces as urban areas. But it remains dependent on resource extraction, despite holding a lot of knowledge and skills connected to living in and from forests that can support desirable livelihoods.

The region is facing increasing pressures to be economically productive and grow amidst so much uncertainty in commodity markets, climate change, biodiversity loss, an aging population and urbanization, and now a global pandemic. On top of that, polarization of forest discourses has made it difficult to move towards action due to conflicting perspectives, politics and value systems related to forests and their usage.

All this raises questions about what sorts of livelihoods, forest-human connections and possibilities for reconnections between rural and urban material cultures are possible and desirable. There is a need for futures that speak to Kainuu’s issues: sustaining forests and livelihoods in co-existence with shifts in climate, technology and urbanization. As such, I wanted to explore how we might understand these complex challenges as opportunities for rural communities to start diversifying from current modes of growth-based resource livelihoods.

Goals

Given that there are no clear answers on how best to transition forest usage in Finland, I think that discussion and decision-making should be led by the communities and actors that are directly impacted and involved with forests. Therefore, I wanted to try using speculation as a starting point to open up space in forest discourses for new perspectives and discussions that can generate new kinds of possible transition pathways and hopefully depolarize discourse.

Below are the main questions that guided the development of my design process and informed how I evaluated the outcomes and process.

Research Questions

1. How might space be opened up in forest discussions for different kinds of values, perspectives and actors (human and nonhuman) concerning forest-based livelihoods and forest-human connections?
   1. How might design expand notions of possible futures for forest-human connections and future livelihoods?

   2. How might openness be increased towards speculation, collaboration and experimentation?

2. How effective are speculative approaches in opening up discussion around difficult transition topics where there isn’t a clear answer?

Research Objectives

Below are the initial objectives that I set at the beginning of my research process to define the scope and scale of the research:

1. Based on expert interviews, I will design a series of speculative scenarios to challenge and spark discussion amongst various stakeholders connected to forests, forest management and ownership in the Kainuu region
2. Organize and facilitate an open workshop for interviewees and anyone connected to Kainuu region to present the speculative scenarios and discuss opportunities to co-design new visions of place-based forest ownership and management
3. Develop a framework or set of criteria for evaluating the impact of the design intervention and workshop in opening up discussions about diverse forest-based livelihoods and forest-human connections.

Design and Theoretical Context

The above map gives an overview of the main design disciplines connected to sustainable transformations that I investigated. These approaches all center on the local or everyday as a starting point of intervention. Although they all operate at different scales and use different methods, they are all complementary.

These are the key concepts that I took from each discipline and applied to my design process. I ended up combining approaches by adopting the theories, scope and roles of design/designer advocated for in Transition Design. I derived ideas of scenario building and engaging key community representatives and actors as described by Transition Design and Design for Social Innovation. While my focus aligned with the more explicitly sustainability-oriented approaches, my method followed speculative design since I used future scenarios to provoke thought and discussion that can open up possibilities for transdisciplinary collaboration towards sustainable transitions – rather than co-designing transition visions with stakeholders.

This is an overview of some key sustainability-oriented theories and place-making as alternatives to growth-based forms of resource extraction. I investigated how current forms of growth-based material extraction in capitalist systems can have destructive tendencies that lead to unsustainable outcomes. I identified decommodification and the diversification of livelihoods as compelling ways to break the link between economic growth, capitalism and resource extraction (in forests).

There is a lot of disagreement on what the exact fundamental issues are that are creating these destructive outcomes from extractionism, so I sought out theories that embraced plurality over universal solutions. This led me to post-growth, diverse economies, and ecological livelihoods as key theoretical concepts for enabling multiple pathways towards sustainable futures in my design process.

Process

This is an overview of my design process and is based on the double diamond model. The design and theoretical context that I discussed were present throughout the whole process and I tried to use the connections between values, interactions and outcomes as a way to express these theories into each stage.

'Expert' Interviews

In the first 2 stages, I gathered qualitative data on forest values, usage and perspectives in Kainuu through expert interviews and then analyzed them. This process of analysis served as the foundation for developing a series of speculative scenarios that could challenge and spark discussion about desirable forest futures. I then organized an open workshop to present and discuss the speculative scenarios with various stakeholders connected to forest usage, management and ownership in Kainuu.

My final objective was to develop some criteria for evaluating the impact and process of the design intervention: make space, expand possibilities and increase openness to collaboration. My goal with these interviews was to gain an impression rather than an objective representation of how people involved in the forest sector or living in Kainuu viewed forests and forest usage. So, I tried to interview a diverse range of people and used a loosely structured format to discuss different aspects of values, activities and views of forests use and management.

Analysis

These are the main theories and frameworks concerning values that I used to analyze and organize the qualitative data I collected from the interviews. These were important for gaining an understanding of the underlying values behind the different views I heard, which are crucial to motivating people to take action and responsibility for sustainability transitions and can provide a common basis for collaboration.

Next, I organized and clustered the data into key themes, viewpoints and the motivational values that I interpreted from the viewpoints. The right image shows that I did this with physical notes at first and then condensed the viewpoints and moved it to a digital format (left image).

These are the core topics that came out from the clustering that I interpreted as most relevant.

I still felt that I didn’t have a clear grasp of the data so I started mapping the motivational values of each topic based on the viewpoint summaries I made to see which were the most or least important for each topic and why. These are a couple of examples of the mappings I made.

A key framework from Ethan Miller’s theory of Ecological Livelihoods that I incorporated into my interview analysis and scenario development is the Circle of Livelihood (pictured below).

Speculative Scenario Development

I used Ethan Miller’s framework to see where there was a lot of discussion already related to forests and to identify gaps in discussion that I could introduce in the scenarios. I also mapped out values to get a sense of which areas certain values are currently important and not so important in forest discussions.

From all this I was able to merge together the different topics into 3 broader topic areas: forest management & ownership, forest landscapes, and use of forest resources.Following that, I started brainstorming ideas for the speculative scenarios based off the patterns and opportunities identified in my analysis and the different alternative livelihood theories described earlier. Although I generated many ideas, I felt that they were too grounded in the present – I wanted to push boundaries and assumptions more by incorporating more technological innovations. This led to thinking about different technology, forest-human interactions and connections inspired from a question raised by one of the interviewees:

"How do we get technology and the forest to live together?"

I ended up developing 3 what-if scenarios and developed them by combining the ecological livelihoods framework and the main topic areas into different aspects of forest-connected living including:

• Livelihoods & Education
• Data, Connectivity & Technology
• Leisure & Travel
• Local & Global Connections

Workshop

Finally, I held an open workshop with 9 participants with various connections to the forest sector and Kainuu where I presented the 3 scenarios and led a series of short discussions for the participants to react to and discuss the scenario ideas.

Overall, participants seemed to be engaged with the topic and discussion was lively. Many participants viewed the scenario concepts as too out there and so had a hard time relating to them. With more time and discussion some participants started to see more clear connections with some of the ideas and technology presented in the scenarios.

Below is a summary of the main conclusions concerning forest topics in Kainuu (and Finland) that participants arrived at as a result of the workshop discussions

Workshop Structure

• Scenarios were more like science fiction/blue sky thinking - hard to connect them to Kainuu and reality
• How should we be using visions/scenarios and testing? To think big or to do small experiments more grounded in reality? Can we do both?
• Diverse groups from different backgrounds and disciplines use terminology (like scenarios) in different ways, so important to build a common language and understanding to collaborate together
• Although scenarios are very futuristic, there are some things already happening like VR ecotourism, remote data sensing and monitoring with drones and forest burials

Workshop Discussion

• Forest ownership is a complex and evolving topic - multiple models to explore as things evolve
• Important not to forget private family forest ownership and the values/care they have for forests
• Forest management is very centralized and there is a need for new and multiple ways of managing forests
• Tough balancing act between supporting biodiversity and needs while also supporting human diversity and needs
• There is an urgent need for people with diverse experiences to get together to discuss how future forests should be managed

Outcomes

In reflecting on my design process, I adapted my initial research questions into a set of evaluation criteria. For engaging and opening up dialogue around difficult forest transition topics, I found that the interviews, scenarios and workshop succeeded in bringing in new perspectives on possible diverse forest-based livelihoods.

The visual form of the speculative scenarios and discussions in the interviews and workshop also were effective in raising visibility and awareness of this topic. The workshop was also a successful method for bringing together diverse actors, however I think there is a lot of opportunity to improve here by utilizing more co-design methods to involve people at each stage in the process.

Reflecting back on the entire process and outcomes, I found that the methodology I followed was successful in making murky transition topics more approachable and could be useful to try for other complex transition topics. Specific to forest transitions, there are 2 areas that I think would be most fruitful for designers to explore.

First, is for designers to support different kinds of forest discussions. The design approach I followed was able to visually communicate complex and abstract theories so that they are both more tangible and discussable, which can enable more future pathways for forest-based livelihoods to become viable.

And second, designers can participate in projects that experiment with alternative forest-based livelihoods and forest management – having more examples of these theories being applied in practical ways helps to make these concepts seem more tangible and possible.