Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of the Environmental Non-
Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) on the forest sector by comparison between Poland
and Sweden. Growing importance of NGOs in environmental and social issues in last decades
has been also observed in forest sector. ENGOs could be considered as an important actor in
solving and defining nature conservation and forest policy problems. Study was performed
from December 2007 till January 2008, on a sample of 9 ENGOs from Poland and 7 ENGOs
from Sweden, based on the interviews and surveys.
The ENGOs pay much less attention to the actors which they consider as weak or
neutral in terms of power in addressing forest-related problems (e.g. individual forest owners
and industry in Poland). Swedish and Polish ENGOs seek to address mainly the most
influential and powerful actors of forest sector: Government and State Forests (in both
countries) and Industry (in Sweden). Instead of disposing of one, universal way of acting
applicable to all actors, ENGOs use specific actor-oriented strategies aimed at addressing
given actor in direct (e.g. lobbying, dialogue with an actor) or indirect (e.g. influencing actor
via international institution or certification) way. ENGOs seek to avoid the reciprocal
competition by diversification of their product (domain in which they specialize) and strategy
(means they use). Swedish and Polish ENGOs point out the same main problems observed in
forest sector: insufficient area of high nature value forests put under protection, followed by
the large number of problems related to the forest management in both countries. While all
the ENGOs agree that state-ownership of forest is the best solution for environmental and
organizational reasons, their perception of optimal forest land use (multi-functional or
specialized) form radically differs.