Why new paths to sustainable transitions are needed

The latest IPCC report, for the first time, raised the need to address the colonization of rural areas and indigenous people. Transitioning to a fossil-free economy is an overarching question for society at large. Especially for rural communities that are not only impacted by climate change but are also the sites of large interventions to mitigate climate change and bring about a green transition. Climate transitions raise issues of justice and fairness that challenge present rural relations and their connections with the urban and with national and EU politics.

These developments reflect competing ideas, discourses, and imaginations about the rural, and the importance of multilevel rural governance and policymaking. What is rural differs widely. How are different Nordic rural areas responding to these changes? 

We invite researchers from different disciplines with interests in the Nordic rural areas as an empirical field to join us in discussing and interpreting transitions at various scales. You are all warmly welcome to give presentations on your ongoing research and projects and contribute to the discussions with key scholars from the field.

Themes

1. Cultures and people, places and identities

2. Sustainable use of natural resources 

3. Rural economy and entrepreneurship

4. Policies and politics of the rural

1. Cultures and people, places and identities

Nordic rural communities are being redefined and rural areas are in a state of flux. Mobility and migration are increasing and new rural-urban relations, disparities, and complementarities emerging. Distance working and migrating labor are increasing, as well as the number of second homes. Depopulation continues in many regions, while some rural areas are thriving. The importance of place and location is changing. Many of us feel attached to certain rural places but might not live there for different reasons. These processes affect social cohesion, and social differentiation in rural areas as well as the construction of identities across borders and places. How are such processes expressed in different locations? How do migration and mobility affect rural areas? Why would people want to live in rural areas? Why do people feel they belong to rural areas, and how is place attachment constructed? What is the meaning of culture in and for rural development? What is the meaning of places and locality for people’s identity?

2. Sustainable use of natural resources 

Natural resources and raw materials are valuable economic, ecological, political, social, and cultural resources. Nature conservation is important while entrepreneurship and industries need space to contribute to the regional and economic development of rural areas. Are contemporary rural and natural resource policies in line with the aims of different dimensions of sustainable development, including climate change mitigation and adaptation? New pressures, interests, and claims on the use of natural resources and landscapes lead to processes of innovation, re-evaluation as well as depletion. Continuities in both natural resource governance and landscape management are questioned and transformed. Yet, path dependencies and institutional contexts shape activities as well. Multifunctional and sustainable landscapes and the use of natural resources have become some of the keywords. How are these processes enacted in different contexts? There may be conflicts between different industries, e.g. tourism and mining. How do trends in food and energy production, forestry, mining, tourism, and nature conservation affect Nordic rural areas? How are entitlements, ownership, and right of access and use of nature transformed? What are the impacts on local levels, on local development and social cohesion? What about its role in the governance of natural resources? What about the resilience of rural areas in which the economy has been based on to use of natural resources? What is the role of urban forest owners? What kind of questions – and answers – are there connecting to a circular economy and bio-economy?

3. Rural economy and entrepreneurship

The rural economy is usually related to traditional industries and sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, recreation, and tourism. Innovations are very often incremental or organizational within the same lines, carried out by the same entrepreneurs; or entrepreneurship is seen as a black box. Nevertheless, can changing landscapes also make way for new rural economies and entrepreneurship? Can new industries and new modes of entrepreneurship operate and revalorize local resources and be important and keys to growth within rural economic and cultural life? There is a need to explore such new industries and modes of entrepreneurship in more detail and see how they can contribute to the advancement of the rural economy. The role of the third sector, for example, as a producer of certain services has been emphasized in rural policy. But what is its fundamental role in rural development? What about NGOs, which may be large actors in rural areas and rural development? Entrepreneurship could also be ’community entrepreneurship’, where the community is considered the main actor rather than a contextual element.

4. Policies and politics of the rural

Rural and agricultural politics and policies are increasingly open for new constellations in rural development. This is bringing new kinds of challenges to the fore. What concepts of rurality underpin these different policies? Are urban ideals and rural realities at variance in the policy formation? What are the new issues and edges emerging in rural policy formation and policy? How can we prepare for a decrease in subsidies? How are the subsidies for entrepreneurship and industry distributed between rural and urban? What is the meaning of rural areas when thinking about the labour force needed in other areas? What is the meaning of place-based information in rural development and rural policy?

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