Wanted and Unwanted Nature: Landscape Development at Fornebu, Norway

Black listing and red listing of species are two of few available tools for dealing with alien species spread and biodiversity loss. This paper sets out to address the categorizations of plants as alien and often black listed or, alternatively, native and often red listed and argues that these categories are portrayed as scientifically neutral within environmental management and conservation efforts while being founded on value-laden and constructed temporal thresholds. Based on Quentin Skinner's perspective of concepts as speech acts the paper explores how categorizations of plants are perceived and ‘practiced’ among actors in a landscape development process, namely a qualitative case study of the redevelopment of the former main Norwegian airport, Fornebu in Oslo, into a green site for housing, business and recreation. Here, conservationists clashed with the planners and landscape architects over the planting of alien species. The Fornebu conflict illustrates how black listing and red listing are founded on a sense of time which largely implies idealizing and preserving certain ‘natural’ conditions, processes or landscapes in a ‘frozen’ state serving as a measuring stick for the future. The paper demonstrates the need for making implicit values in environmental management and planning more explicit in order to meet environmental challenges related to alien, invasive species spread and biodiversity loss.