Presentation short abstract

In Norwegian mountain commons, wolverine conservation reshapes landscape imaginaries and rural lives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores shifting values of land and land dynamics in the green transition, revealing an emerging commons with different premises of sharing a landscape.

Presentation long abstract

The establishment of predator prioritized zones for species conservation within traditional grazing landscapes in Norway has led to significant loss in farmers’ livestock herds, farmer economies and as well as changing rural socialities. This represent a new land dynamic which shows how the rural becomes a frontier in the shifting value of landscapes, species protection, and the agrarian. In this paper, I build on ethnographic fieldwork in Norwegian rural mountain villages, where the conservation and governance of wolverines (lat: gulo gulo) have destabilized traditional agricultural practices such as common grazing (unfenced grazing in commons). Through the Bern Convention, Norway has a responsibility in managing and preserving the Northern European wolverine population which situates the green transition and its political aspiration not only locally, but also in a broader European context. This paper discusses the ways in which new political land dynamics displace and replace local landscape values and practices such as common grazing. In the "greening" of nature politics, mountain commons are transformed to a national biodiversity commons, and thus from local to national values of interest. Herein, the value of a species under threat of extinction is deemed irreplaceable, whilst loss of livestock can be economically compensated, and the abandonment of common grazing is seen as unavoidable under the notion of efficiency in agricultural production. In sum, rural commons exemplify a form of frontier assemblage, in which land dynamics trouble the shared capacity of commons through new mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the name of green transition.