In the present project proposal, we will refer to1:
Private Forests as forest land owned by a single owner or by a group of co-owners. Group-owned private forest is sometimes referred in literature also as Common or Communal Property Forest. The project will essentially focus on small forest owners.
Community Forests as forests owned by the State or a commune and is managed by a community of interest, i.e. group of people sharing the same interests and objectives in managing the resource and which have the ability to influence and to control decision making. In the project region it is in general a state forest for which a community has been granted access and management rights under certain conditions
Commune Forests as forests belonging to administrative units, locally self governed by a mayor and municipal council. These forests are managed by a local forest administration with no or little involvement of the public. Commune forests should not be confused with group owned private forests.
The present project proposal will focus mainly of the first two type of ownership, Private and Community Forests. Therefore we will refer to private forest owners (single small forest owner or group of small forest owners) and to community users .
The 7 countries Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia participating in this Project comprise around 18.9 million ha forest which represents an average forest coverage of the land area of around 31% .The differences within this group of countries are, however considerable, ranging from about 20% in Hungary to 55% in Slovenia. With the exception of Albania, the forest area is increasing in all these countries.
As part of the economic restructuring process of the central planning system into a market economy, forest ownership and management is undergoing a dramatic change in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe, although with different speed in the various countries. The former overall state forest management system is now being partly privatised, at least as it is required in the course of compensation / restitution of forest owners of before the socialist period. This has resulted in most of the countries in a rapid and high increase of the number of private forest owners, many with small and sometimes dispersed forest areas and little background about forest management.
According to available statistics, private and community forests count for about 6.9 mill. ha or 36.4% of the forest areas in the participating countries. It is mainly single owned private forest, but in some countries, such as Slovakia, the percentage of co-owned forest is relevant. In most of the countries, the average holding size would not exceed 5 ha. In Albania, community forestry is prevailing, whilst private ownership can be neglected.
In summary, the economic restructuring brought in the participating countries a fragmented ownership structure with the difficulty to implement the centrally planned forest management plans.
Forestry requires long-term, consistent policy objectives, which are not changed continuously due to fashion and short-term political influences. Most of the participating countries have an understanding of their long-term policy objectives, all of them recognising widely the multiple beneficial role of forests and the need for their sustainable use, including all wood and non-wood forest products and services such as nature protection and recreation. The countries are signatories of the Helsinki Resolution on sustainable forest management.
Most of the participating countries have also, or are in the process of, developing a forest strategy by which they want to achieve this set of forest policy objectives. They have adopted new forest legislation in the early 1990s. In most cases, the perceived need for new forest laws has been related to reforms in the area of land tenure, mainly the recognition of private property rights. Correspondingly, the participating countries want to establish a forest management system which takes into consideration private ownership resulting from the restitution and privatisation process.
This project proposal is based on the conceptual framework provided by FAO/ECE/ ILO, "Public Participation in Forestry in Europe and North America", 2000, and other practical experiences in developing countries with participatory forestry methods.
Positive practical experience with this concept was gained during implementation of the FAO TCP assistance to Slovenia, "Capacity Building for Support to Private Forest Owners and Public Participation" which was started in February 2000 and ended mid 2001. This TPC in combination with other activities such as in Albania was encouraging a number of other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to articulate interest in a similar or extended support for improving private / community forest management in a participatory manner in their countries.
Namely Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia responded and participated in a project planning workshop which took place from 17 to 20 September 2001 in Bled, Slovenia. The target of this Workshop was to gather information, analyse the problems, develop a strategy for overcoming these problems and to plan a regional project for the participating countries in view of supporting their efforts to strengthen private / community forestry in selected Central and Eastern European countries.
The forestry sector in all participating countries is strongly dominated by the state forestry services (SFS). These SFS were previously directly responsible for all forest management aspects from the protecting and planning to the implementation and marketing stage of work. Nevertheless the new ownership structure objectively needs a new forestry service system oriented considerably more towards private owners. The major tool for this is undoubtedly a forestry extension system which is operating on the basis of participatory methods. This is widely recognised by the SFS in most of the countries. The forestry extension systems with the primary objective to provide private forest owners (PFO) with knowledge about, and assistance for, sustainable yield forest management, are, however, still under-developed in all of the participating countries, although there exist differences.
This means that the SFS hardly reach the PFO with their messages and are not in a position to understand fully their problems and their forest management objectives.
The formation of associations of forest owners is hampered by bad memories connected with forced collectivisation in the past. Most of the existing associations aim mainly at common forest management or marketing their forest products. However, they are still very weak and have little impact on the profitability of the forest management activities of their members.
1Communities and Forest Management in Western Europe. WG-CIFM: IUCN, DFID, Ford Fundation, WWF, 2001.