This chapter analyzes the competing interests of stakeholder groups in Latvia’s Gauja National Park (GNP), and how landuse policy changes in GNP are shaped by a debate
between stakeholders. In the current international environmental context, nations must contend with global influences on local environmental policy in addition to multiple internal demands. This research has found that the various GNP stakeholder groups primarily value biodiversity, Latvia’s cultural landscape, economic use of the forest and agricultural lands, and recreation and tourism within the Park. It will be shown that the value of preserving biodiversity is backed by international NGO’s, Western government organizations, and the European Union, and that preserving biodiversity has been at the forefront of the GNP Administration’s agenda. The value, espoused by Latvian academics, of preserving/restoring the Latvian national identity through the preservation/restoration of an idealized Latvian cultural landscape is a part of a larger post-Soviet policy of political justice, reinstating Latvians in positions of power within Latvia, and helping a Latvian national identity to reemerge since Latvian independence. The value of economically sustainable landuses among local inhabitants also figures heavily into the discourse among stakeholders regarding land ownership and landuse in GNP. Since the Latvian cultural landscape, as defined by Latvian landscape scientists, developed between the late 1700’s and the beginning of the
Soviet period (1940) through historical economic utilization of the land, the preservation of the Latvian cultural landscape is closely tied to sustainable economic uses of the land.
This chapter investigates how the post-Soviet GNP landscape has been altered through two mechanisms: land restitution and changes in the GNP Administration’s goals. Although land restitution in Latvia reflects the multitude of values around which multiple post-Soviet land privatization methods were based throughout the region, it will be shown that Latvian land restitution reflects foremost a commitment to the political justice of
preserving national identity and restoring power primarily to ethnic Latvians from pre-Soviet times. Schwartz (2001) makes the argument that changes in the GNP Administration’s goals throughout the 1990’s reflect the global value of preserving biodiversity at the expense of protecting some of Latvia’s cultural landscapes. The research in this chapter supports this argument, and examines the local backing for biodiversity protection and for the protection of the cultural and productive landscapes in the Park. This chapter analyzes the values and interests of key GNP stakeholders. It will elucidate the values that inspired the GNP Administration’s goal changes and those that inspired land restitution, how these values conflict, and how they manifested themselves in the landscape and landuse policy of GNP.
METHODS
A questionnaire was designed by the author for the purpose of interviewing a large number of GNP residents (see Appendix I). The questionnaire functioned as a guide for the interviewers during the interview process, though the respondents did not read the
questionnaire. The responses from these questionnaires were to be used to understand the population and socioeconomic characteristics of the Park, the residents’ income sources, the progression of household ownership from the Soviet era through modern times, the ways in
which the residents were using the land in GNP, the residents’ knowledge about the Park’s landuse laws, and information about land sales in the Park. A beta-test, or “test run”, of these interviews was conducted in the field in July of 2002. Seven interviewees were chosen (six were chosen arbitrarily and one was a personal contact – the translator’s grandfather) in different regions of the Park, and the interviewers (Gregory N. Taff and translator, Sandra Tece) drove to houses and asked for a resident who would be willing to answer questions. If no one was available for interview, a convenient nearby house was chosen. Although initial results were useful and interesting, it was determined that much of the information that would be gathered from interviewing a large number of GNP residents was obtainable through other sources, including the Latvian Central Statistical Bureau, and a landowner survey already administered by the GNP Administration in 1999. In addition, to understand the breadth of post-Soviet influences on landuse change in GNP and the conflicts between stakeholders, it was determined that a broader set of stakeholders should be interviewed, and a more effective method to study these issues was through open-ended interviews of key informants. The interviews obtained through the beta-test served as useful anecdotal evidence, though no statistical inferences can be drawn from them due to the small sample size.
Open-ended interviews of key informants were conducted in the field in the autumn of 2002, the winter of 2003, and the winter and spring of 2004 to identify GNP stakeholder groups, to ascertain the various stakeholder values and interests regarding the landscape in GNP, to understand how these stakeholder groups interact, and to gather information about how the GNP landscape and landuse policy are changing. Topics discussed in the interviews were often based on issues identified as important by the interviewee and by previously
interviewed key informants. Most interviews lasted between one and three hours, and some required the assistance of a translator, Sandra Tece, to translate between English and Latvian. Interviews were recorded with permission of the interviewee. During the evening after each interview, the author and the translator, Sandra Tece, typed up the important points of the interview, often with the help of the audio tape. These interviews were conducted with members of multiple government institutions at local and national levels, the GNP
Administration, representatives from domestic and international NGO’s, academics, and a local journalist. The set of stakeholders interviewed is similar to the set interviewed in related case studies conducted by Tickle (2000) on the relationships between nature protection and landscape conservation, and the post-socialist socioeconomic and political transitions. Tickle conducted research “primarily through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with key individuals including relevant government or state officials, protected area managers, local government representatives and interested citizen groups (often environmental non- government organizations or NGOs), combined with field visits to the countries” (p. 212).
Interviewees were identified using a snowball approach, beginning with contacts made at the GNP Administration and those listed in Schwartz’s research (2001). The set of GNP stakeholder groups was determined through these interviews using an iterative process (key informants from GNP stakeholder groups were interviewed, and they identified other members of the same stakeholder group or members of another stakeholder group, who were subsequently interviewed, and who subsequently identified others, etc., until the author determined each stakeholder group to be sufficiently represented.) This method was chosen because when the research began, the important stakeholder groups were not specifically known. The snowball method allowed the identification of these groups via those intimately
involved with GNP. Interviewees were recruited until the major stakeholder groups were well represented. Thirty-seven interviews were conducted with 35 interviewees (two key informants were interviewed twice). The set of GNP stakeholder groups, as determined from these interviews, is presented in Figure 2.1. A shortcoming of the snowball approach is that the individuals identified by interviewees may be from limited social/professional circles, and they may be a subset of the full population of interest, and therefore, some key
stakeholders may have been unknowingly overlooked. In addition, the particular individuals within each stakeholder group may tend to hold similar views as those from other stakeholder groups, since the members of the stakeholder groups were identified by members of another group to be interviewed. Key members from all groups represented in Figure 2.1 were interviewed.
Open-ended questions were asked in the interviews regarding the history of GNP, the structure of institutions overseeing GNP, the changing ecology of the Park, the interests of the various stakeholder groups, and the conflicts between stakeholder groups, particularly as these topics relate to landuse and landcover change in the Park. ‘Stories’ were generated by interviewing stakeholders with conflicting views or interests on the same topic, and an attempt was made through the interviews to understand the motivations for the various stakeholder interests and actions. To analyze the interviews, text from similar topics
discussed by multiple interviewees were grouped together, and topics were categorized into general categories (e.g., the Latvian cultural landscape, the Park’s management zones, the ecology of the Park, tourism in the Park, Park landuse restrictions, illegal forest cutting, and economic production on the land). These topics were then analyzed one at a time, while considering each interviewee response related to that topic. The results of these interviews were supplemented with information gleaned from relevant GNP policy and planning documents, press articles, and academic literature on Latvia and GNP.