The study "Auf dem Holzweg Richtung Zukunft?" is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Harz Mountains and examines how local people experience and explain forest and climate change and how they imagine the forest of the future against the backdrop of advancing climate change. The starting point for the research is the forest in the Harz, which was long dominated by spruce monocultures but has been dying off on a large scale since 2018.
The author shows that experiences of the forest vary greatly, so that one can speak of different “forest worlds.” This ontological multiplicity harbors considerable potential for conflict and leads to the state of the forest being interpreted partly as a crisis and partly as an opportunity. Reactions to these changes are examined on an emotional, linguistic-discursive, and practical level.
It becomes clear that the death of trees in the Harz Mountains is not exclusively attributed to man-made climate change, as is often the case in media discourse. Rather, a differentiated, multi-causal understanding dominates, which explains why contradictory interpretations coexist—and why many people nevertheless remain hopeful.