Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 308

308         Arctic Yearbook 2014 economic growth (Putnam 1993; Fukuyama 2002). Thus, both natural and social capital are tightly linked to economic and human dimensions of development and have been developed to evoke attention and advance discussions on the role of alternative forms of capital to sustainable development. This paper introduces the concept of socio-natural capital to identify hindering and facilitating factors for sustainable land use in the Fennoscandia. Sustainable land use can be defined as practices that maintain and provide opportunities for land use for current and future economic and social benefits, while not deteriorating the ecological state of the used areas. There may be also contradictions between the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability. Here the discussions on socio-natural capital are placed within the context of social-ecological systems (SES). SES literature highlights that the sustainability of resource use needs to take into account coupled social-ecological systems and their interrelations (e.g. Folke et al. 2005). SES examinations have been previously connected to natural capital (e.g. Biggs et al. 2012) and to social capital (e.g. Olsson et al. 2004). Natural capital is seen as a stock of properties of ecosystem structures and processes, which provide so called ‘ecosystem services’ to people (e.g. Daily 1997). Following the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES 2013), there are three types of services: 1) provisioning (products obtained from ecosystems e.g. food, wood, water), 2) regulating and maintenance (moderate or control of environmental conditions e.g. flood control; water purification by aquifers, carbon sequestration by forests, etc.), 3) cultural (non-material benefits obtained from ecosystems e.g. recreation, education, aesthetics). Today, supporting services (MA 2005) or natural capital (Costanza et al. 1997) are mostly assigned to ecosystem functions as parameters of the ecological functioning grounding the other types of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services can be understood as a flow from natural capital to ecosystem services, which further provide benefits and values for people (Haines-Young & Potschin 2010). However, the accounts on provisioning of ecosystem services need to take into consideration the inseparable social and ecological dimensions affecting ecosystem services, and further on human benefits and well-being (Heikkinen et al. 2012; Spangenberg et al. 2014). The ecosystem services, values and benefits provided by natural capital are socially negotiated, and also contested due to divergent social conceptualisations of what constitutes for example environmentally and socially sustainable land use. In this article we apply this idea, and do not focus on natural capital as such, but on contested social definitions on the sustainable use of that capital. Therefore, the notion of socio-natural capital seems to hold promise for integrating more clearly the social dimension inevitably linked to the concept of natural capital, and expanding it though the notions of trust, networks, communication, power, norms and governance practices. The concept of human capital refers to the stock of competencies, knowledge and social attributes that increase an ability to produce economic value (Simkovic 2013). Bourdieu (1986) has introduced sub-dimensions for human capital, those being social, cultural and symbolic capital. Here we apply the concept of social capital to build up our notion of socio-natural capital. In recent discussions on development, the concept of social capital has been described as the glue that holds societies together (Serageldin & Grootaert 1999). The most important aspects of social capital are trust, norms, reciprocity, leadership and networks (Putnam 1993). Furthermore, communication has been Socio-Natural Capital for Sustainable Land Use in the Fennoscandia