Er is veel geschreven over de culturele en spirituele waarden van bos en natuur, in Nederland en daarbuiten. Maar hoe werken vooral die spirituele waarden door bos door in de dagelijkse praktijk van bosbeheerders? Over deze vraag gaat mijn promotie-onderzoek aan Wageningen University and Research (WUR).
Proefschrift/promotie
Mijn proefschrift is getiteld: Spirit in the Woods. The grounding of spiritual values in forest management.
Ik ben op dit proefschrift gepromoveerd op 16 april 2024 in Wageningen.
Samenvatting (Nederlands)
Spirituele waarden van bossen (bos-spiritualiteit) worden steeds meer erkend in grote wereldwijde debatten over bossen. Het belang van spirituele waarden bij duurzaam bosbeheer is echter nog weinig bekend in het Noordelijke deel van de wereld. Dit proefschrift verkent hoe spiritualiteit doorwerkt in het bosbeheer. De eerste vraag is daarbij: Wat verstaan we onder spirituele waarden van bos, en hoe onderzoeken we die waarden? Er zijn veel uiteenlopende definities van ‘spirituele waarden’. Daarom heb ik een conceptueel raamwerk opgesteld met negen ‘dimensies’, ontleend aan de ‘zeven dimensies van religie’ van de godsdienstwetenschapper Ninian Smart. De volgende vraag is: hoe werken spirituele waarden door in bosbeheerplannen? Plannen zijn een belangrijke schakel tussen beleid en uitvoering. Met behulp van het raamwerk heb ik 20 beheerplannen geanalyseerd, uit British Columbia (Canada) en Nederland. Het blijkt dat spirituele waarden – onder verschillende benamingen – belangrijke elementen zijn in beheerplannen, niet alleen in rurale gebieden en voor Inheemse volken, maar ook voor urbane gebieden zoals Nederland. Tenslotte onderzocht ik hoe spirituele waarden doorwerken in de praktijk van het bosbeheer. Hiervoor werden 25 bosbeheerders geïnterviewed in Nederland. De meesten zien een groeiende variatie van spirituele praktijken in bos, en staan daar neutraal tot welwillend tegenover zolang die praktijken niet botsen met ecologische of andere waarden. Sommige particuliere eigenaren stimuleren actief de spirituele beleving en praktijken op hun eigen terrein (de Pater et al. 2024). ik concludeer dat bos-spiritualiteit niet alleen gaat om beleving, hoewel dat erg belangrijk is voor natuurverbondenheid en gezondheid van mensen. Maar het gaat ook om andere zaken. Spiritualiteit speelt bijvoorbeeld een rol bij inzichten hoe je bossen en bomen mag gebruiken (‘wijs’ gebruik van bos), al lopen deze inzichten af en toe behoorlijk uiteen. Verder werkt bos-spirtualiteit soms door in de geschiedenis van een plek, waarmee mensen zich verbonden voelen en hun identiteit aan ontlenen. Tenslotte zijn er de onzegbare/ontastbare aspecten van bos-spiritualiteit, vaak aangeduid als ‘Aarde-energie’ of ‘levenskracht’. Bos-spiritualiteit kan worden bevorderd in beleid en beheer door de rust te handhaven in bossen en andere stiltegebieden, verantwoorde vormen van houtoogst te bevorderen, oude en speciale (‘heilige’) bomen en bossen te beschermen, en participatief bosbeheer te mainstreamen. Ten slotte wordt een leermodel voorgesteld voor bosbeheerders om bosspiritualiteit te integreren in nieuwe vormen van bosbeheer en zo de transformatie ervan dichterbij te brengen.
Abstract (English)
Spiritual values of forests (forest spirituality) are increasingly recognised in major global debates on forests. However, the significance of spiritual values in on-the-ground sustainable forest management in the Global North is still largely unknown. This thesis presents a conceptual framework with nine dimensions to investigate spirituality in forest management. With this framework, spiritual values are studied in forest management plans from British Columbia and the Netherlands, and in forest management practices in the Netherlands. The study reveals four themes in which forest spirituality is articulated in forest management: 1) spiritual experience and ritual practices in forests enhancing nature connectedness and human health; 2) ‘wise’ use of forests and trees underpinned by diverging ontologies; 3) local history related to identity and place attachment, and 4) ineffabale aspects of spirituality. Implications for policy and research are discussed and an ‘inspirational-experiential’ learning cycle is proposed to ground spirituality in transformative forest management.
Summary (English)
This dissertation investigates spiritual values of forests (forest spirituality) and their grounding in forest management. Major global forest-related policies include cultural and spiritual values, but little is known about how spiritual values are articulated in field-level forest management. In the Global South, the role and importance of spiritual practices and beliefs in forest management have been generally well documented. In the Global North, evidence of the importance of spirituality for human-nature connections, human well-being and pro-environmental behaviour is increasingly building up. However, research into the role of spiritual values in forest management has remained under-systematized and under-theorized overall. In the Netherlands, a growing and diversifying demand for spiritual enrichment in forests has been observed, entangled with citizens’ growing concerns about forests. Forest managers need to accommodate these diversifying spiritual concerns in their management. Chapter 1 positions this research within the interdisciplinary academic domain of Religion and Nature. Recognizing the on-going definitional debates on spirituality and spiritual values, this dissertation conceptualizes ‘spirituality’ as engrained in the highest level of people’s value systems, enriching the human and non-human spirit, and, at the same time, hard to define, hard to measure, elusive and only apprehensible by experiencing it. The research objective of this dissertation is to better understand how forest spirituality is grounded in forest management and what the implications of this understanding are for the planning and practices of forest management. In order to achieve this objective, this dissertation is structured around three research questions: 1) How can forest spirituality be investigated with due regard for its complex nature? 2) How is forest spirituality articulated in forest management plans? and 3) What is the significance of forest spirituality for forest management practices? Chapter 2 addresses the first research question and describes the construction of the conceptual framework for the empirical study of forest spirituality. It explains the theoretical foundations derived from religious scholarship, Saler’s ‘family resemblances approach’ and the ‘seven dimensions of religion’ posited by Ninian Smart. Building on these foundations, the chapter proposes a framework comprising 10 ‘dimensions’ structuring spiritual phenomena relevant to forest management for systematic study. Each dimension is characterized by illustrative examples from literature. The framework is designed to accommodate the various ontologies and epistemologies connected to forest spirituality globally, serving as an adaptable tool for both qualitative and quantitative research on various aspects of the interplay between spiritual values and forest management and conservation. Chapter 3 describes how this multi-dimensional conceptual framework was applied to investigate the articulation of spiritual values in forest management plans. To this end, 10 plans from British Columbia (Canada) and 10 plans from the Netherlands were investigated. For both locations, the chapter elicits and compares the spiritual dimensions represented in the underlying principles, objectives and operational sections of forest management plans. The widespread but often concealed occurrence of spiritual dimensions in the plans suggests that spiritual values are essential elements of sustainable forest policy and management; they appear not only in the ‘abstract’ (principles and objectives) sections of the plans, but also in operational prescriptions. The articulations of the spiritual values identified can be grouped in three thematic clusters: ‘Nature experience’, ‘Spiritual use’ and ‘History’. The chapter concludes that: 1) the experiential dimensions of forest spirituality are the most significant dimension in both locations; 2) forest spirituality is also significant in people’s ‘wise’ use of forests; 3) forest spirituality is best accommodated in forest management approaches that are inclusive and holistic; 4) history may affect spiritual relationships with land and forest positively or negatively; and 5) forest spirituality is not the exclusive domain for Indigenous peoples, but also for the Global North and in contexts with non-Indigenous populations. Chapter 4 investigates forest management practices in the Netherlands. The chapter applies Chapter 2’s multi-dimensional conceptual framework to qualitatively explore the roles of spiritual dimensions in practical forest management. Public and private foresters across the Netherlands were inteviewed and data were analyzed following a constructivist grounded theory approach. Four themes were found in which forest spirituality is articulated in management practices. Firstly, forests are increasingly used for ritual practices aimed at spiritual enrichment and health with different consequences for public and private forest management. Secondly, ontological and relational considerations affect several forest management practices, mainly concerning diverging views on tree felling and, furthermore, educational programmes aimed at nature connectedness. Thirdly, forest spirituality is expressed in local legends and historical monuments deployed to raise the public’s interest in forests. Fourthly, ineffabale aspects of spirituality emerge in references to unspecified spiritual experiences and occasional cases of intuitive forest management. The chapter concludes that forest spirituality is not only significant for nature experience but also for ritual practices in forests, nature connection and healing, and forest use. Public foresters in particular have to reconcile their management with increasing ‘spiritual’ claims by an increasingly heterogenous public. In order to cope with these processes, research and learning needs are discussed. Chapter 5 presents the conclusions from the three studies. The multi-dimensional conceptual framework has proven suitable for further use, especially in integative management approaches. This dissertation also demonstrates that spiritual values have indeed been substantially operationalized in forest management in the study areas. Further studies into forest spirituality may suppport better accommodation of forest spirituality in forest management in policies and implementation, e.g. by maintaining quiet areas, encouraging responsible timber management, conservation of old growth and sacred forests and the mainstreaming of participatory forest management, thus potentially mitigating forest conflicts. Finally, a speculative learning model is suggested for forest managers to integrate forest spirituality in new and transformative forms of forest management.
Keywords
Spiritual values; Forest spirituality; Forest; Forest management; Dimensions of religion; British Columbia; The Netherlands
Fairy Tree, Scotland (photo: C. de Pater)