At the limit of volunteerism? Swedish family forest owners and two policy strategies to increase forest biodiversity

Abstract Sweden is not on track to meet its own national 2020 environmental goals for sustainable forests. Due to the deliberate design of Swedish forest policy, private forest owners’ voluntary forest and biodiversity protection efforts are required to help close the policy gap. Using survey data from Swedish family forest owners, this paper outlines how forest owner attitudes reveal challenges and opportunities for two general strategies to increasing forest and biodiversity protection. The first strategy is attempting to institute changes within status quo Swedish forest policy by relying on family forest owners to make such changes voluntarily. The second strategy is encouraging management changes by using policy reforms. Our qualitative results suggest that Swedish forest policy is close to the limit of what can be accomplished with volunteerism alone and likely requires policy reforms to close its forest and biodiversity protection gap on family-owned forests.