ABSTRACT

How are different concepts of nature and time embedded into human practices of landscape and environmental management? And how can temporalities that entwine past, present and future help us deal with challenges on the ground? In a time of uncertainty and climate change, how much can we hold onto ideals of nature rooted in a pristine and stable past? The Scandinavian and Australian perspectives in this book throw fresh light on these questions and explore new possibilities and challenges in uncertain and changing landscapes of the future.

This book presents examples from farmers, gardens and Indigenous communities, among others, and shows that many people and communities are already actively engaging with environmental change and uncertainty. The book is structured around four themes; environmental futures, mobile natures, indigenous and colonial legacies, heritage and management. Part I includes important contributions towards contemporary environmental management debates, yet the chapters in this section also show how the legacy of older landscapes forms part of the active production of future ones. Part II examines the challenges of living with mobile natures, as it is acknowledged that environments, natures and people do not stand still. An important dimension of the heritage and contemporary politics of Australia, Sweden and Norway is the presence of indigenous peoples. As is clear in part III, the legacies of the colonial past both haunt and energise contemporary land management decisions. Finally, part IV demonstrates how the history and heritage of landscapes, including human activities in those landscapes, are entwined with contemporary environmental management.

The rich empirical content of the chapters exposes the diversity of meanings, practices, and ways of being in nature that can be derived from cultural environmental research in different disciplines. The everyday engagements between people, nature and temporalities provide important creative resources with which to meet future challenges.

part |12 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|10 pages

Holding on and letting go

Nature, temporality and environmental management

part I|62 pages

Imagining new environmental futures and entwined pasts

chapter 2|15 pages

The outside within

The shifting ontological practice of the environment in Australia

chapter 3|15 pages

Landscape, temporality and responsibility

Making conceptual connections through alien invasive species

chapter 5|16 pages

The view from off-centre

Sweden and Australia in the imaginative discourse of the Anthropocene

part II|56 pages

Living with nature in motion

chapter 6|17 pages

The co-presence of past and future in the practice of environmental management

Implications for rural-amenity landscapes

chapter 7|18 pages

Wild tradition

Hunting and nature in regional Sweden and Australia

part III|36 pages

Indigenous challenges to environmental imaginaries

chapter 9|16 pages

Indigenous land claims and multiple landscapes

Postcolonial openings in Finnmark, Norway

chapter 10|18 pages

Mining as colonisation

The need for restorative justice and restitution of traditional Sami lands

part IV|53 pages

Temporalities of environmental management

chapter 11|17 pages

Challenges in agricultural land management

A Scandinavian perspective on contextual variations and farmers' room to manoeuvre

chapter 12|18 pages

Performing natures

Adaptive management practice in the ‘eternally unfolding present'

chapter 13|16 pages

How to bring historical forms into the future?

An exploration of Swedish semi-natural grasslands