Abstract for:Different worldviews as impediments to integrated nature and cultural heritage conservation management

Despite an explicit objective from the two responsible managing governmental agencies, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and Swedish National Heritage Board, attempts to initiate and increase the degree of integrated nature and cultural heritage conservation management in the Swedish mountains are failing. The delivery of the Swedish National Environmental Objective called Magnificent Mountains is dependent on increased collaboration between the state and local stakeholders. This study, using a group model building approach, maps out the systems dynamics of interactions between the objectives of managing agencies and the participation of local stakeholder. We find that a dominant wilderness discourse influence the objectives for the protected areas to managed, and that this wilderness discourse appears to work as barrier to including local stakeholders in management. This because wilderness-influenced objectives are defining the protected areas as environments ”untouched” by humans, while they also depend traditional practices to be continued, and thus leads to reducing the need for local participation in environmental management. We argue that a potential leverage point to initiate change towards increased integration of nature and cultural environmental management is to give the implementation of the European Landscape Convention a higher priority.