Neither Norway nor Sweden has fulfilled international commitments to the principles of direct public involvement in nature conservation, which involve (we believe) the state adopting an ‘enabling’ role, mobilizing governance resources to support decentralized decision-making while retaining powers to intervene when necessary to defend important minority interests or support international objectives. We analyse four attempts to establish nature conservation areas with substantial levels of direct public involvement in the two countries and argue that in each case, flaws in the setting of the areas' boundaries, the framework for participation and conflict resolution mechanisms have undermined public involvement. Hence, there is a need to design more effective, enabling rules to encourage local actor involvement in nature conservation and resolve any political issues that arise as a consequence of such involvement, before the international commitments can be fulfilled.