Foreword

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has produced Dialogue for Nature Conservation, a programme for skills development in dialogue, local participation and management, together with conflict management within nature conservation and the management of natural resources. It is intended primarily for personnel within the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the county administrative boards who work with nature conservation. We hope that Dialogue for Nature Conservation will become a useful aid in implementing nature conservation policies in cooperation with local efforts. Open communication with the world around us is a prerequisite for successful nature conservation. The aim is to realize the ideas presented in “En samlad naturvårdspolitik” (“A Shared Nature Conservation Policy”, Swedish government doc. 2001/02:173) and in “Sammanhållen rovdjurspolitik” (“A Shared Predator Policy”, Government bill 2000/01:57). Increased local participation is an important aim in both of these documents. It is also an important aspect of the work to implement the Convention for Biological Diversity and the ecosystem approach to developing participation and local management of natural resources.The programme has been developed by a project group at the Natural Resources Department. The initial project manager was Cecilia Persson, who was succeeded by Mia Olausson, both from the Unit for Outdoor Recreation and Nature Management. Jesper Taube and Suzanne Kolare were also members of the project group. The Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, produced a draft programme, which was subsequently refined by the project group. Stockholm, March 2007