Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

This essay intends to provide an understanding of the developments in the right of public access and recreational activities in the forests of Sweden, and which factors and prerequisites that have affected this development. The forest and its history, along with recreational development has in many ways shaped today’s rights of public access, but there is also an age-old tradition of public access that has affected how we have used the forest, and that also has enabled the development of outdoor recreation. Many are unaware of this, which causes misunderstanding to appear around the rights of public access and how it is supposed to be used.

The essay opens with historical descriptions of public access, the Swedish forest and outdoor recreation, to thereby provide a picture of how these three fields have influenced each other over the centuries. This is followed by a description of the current access rights and the problems associated with those, and a description of other countries' equivalent of the right of public access. The purpose of this is to see the differences between countries, and thereby clarifying what it is that affects whether a country has a tradition of public access or not. The essay concludes with a longer discussion in which the author weaves together the different areas and conducts a discussion around the essay’s questions of issue and supplementary questions to those.

A discussion on the rights of public access and its history is necessary since there is a general ignorance on the field today. This ignorance is a serious threat towards of the rights of public access and can in the future lead to restrictions on our right to the nature.