Rhetoric researcher uncovers surprising parallels in polarized forest debate

The lecture was given by Klara Härgestam, a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at Örebro University, on the polarizing forest debate and the attemt to understand the strong emotions tied to the forest. 

Approximately twenty people listened to Klara Härgestam talk about how she, through her research, aims to explore people's feelings and relationships with the forest. She encouraged the audience to reflect on their own relationship with the forest. How is it that groups, which stand far apart on other issues, can come together when it comes to forests?  

We need to open our eyes to how something as human as a debate between different people also has ecological effects.

Rhetoric also involves understanding each other, and Härgestam explained during the lecture how the way we communicate with one another has real consequences for the forest. When a debate is labeled as polarized, it leads to certain voices being silenced, which in turn leads to the loss of important perspectives that might be necessary to tackle the climate crisis.

Härgestam describes how some of the sides in the ongoing forest debate use similar arguments, for example those who want to see a continuation of the current forest policy and conducting forestry in the same ways as before, and those who want to see other new ways of using the forest. Both sides rely for example on economic arguments and claim that there are economic advantages to their particular solutions.

After the lecture, a brief Q&A session took place, focusing largely on which actors actually benefit from a polarized debate, as well as the fact that different actors in the debate hold varying degrees of power. Härgestam's visit to Bildmuseet is her second visit to Umeå by invitation of Future Forests, following her presentation in the Forest Social Lecture Series.