Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2021
The shifting society syndrome: Values, baselines, and Swedish forest conservation in the 1930s and 2010s
Jonsson, Jimmy; Marald, Erland; Lundmark, TomasAbstract
This study addresses a response to shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), a syndrome implying that land managers' acceptance of environmental change declines gradually due to lack of historical knowledge. Some actions to counteract SBS are haunted by methodological problems associated with measuring natural states and ignoring societal effects on ideas of naturalness. To balance methodological discussions of SBS, this study analyzes the social contexts of baseline demarcations historically. It compares baselines in two Swedish forest conservation debates-about the Fiby forest in the 1930s and the Ojnare forest in the 2010s-focusing on scalable and unscalable values. To operationalize shifting societal criteria for baseline demarcations, we introduce the "shifting society syndrome" concept. The study identifies several societal shifts and shows that Fiby's baseline was shaped by the scalable value of age and the nonscalable values of uniqueness and Swedishness, and Ojnare's by the scalable value of biodiversity and the nonscalable values of uniqueness and wildness. We argue that values, scalability, and historical change are crucial variables in the practice of demarcating baselines and that intellectual history is a useful tool for methodological self-reflection in SBS research.Keywords
Fiby; forest conservation; forest history; naturalness; Ojnare; scalability; shifting baseline syndrome; valuesPublished in
Conservation science and practice2021, volume: 3, number: 10, article number: e506
Publisher: WILEY
Authors' information
Jönsson, Jimmy
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Ecology and Management
Marald, Erland
Umea University
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Ecology and Management
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG15 Life on land
UKÄ Subject classification
Forest Science
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.506
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113290