An Institutionalist Approach to Environmental Valuation: The Regional Forest Programme of Southwest Finland as an Example

This paper discusses the impacts of different formal and informal institutions upon the Regional Forest Programme of Southwest Finland (1997–2001). The divide between formal and informal institutions is a binary distinction: it is used as a discursive tool for identifying social structures and processes and for articulating their significance in development and environmental planning, valuation and decision-making. In the end part of the paper, there is a brief discussion of how normative and moral issues can be explicitly and more creatively integrated into the practice of environmental policy.