Private and Community Forestry in Central and Eastern Europe

"Strengthening of Private and Community Forestry in Selected Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)"

Background and justification

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. 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.

The increasing private and community forests are presently managed unsustainably concerning profitability and preservation of the resource productivity. The obvious lack of knowledge of the private forest owners (PFO) and community users concerning sustainable forest management has its roots in a loss of traditions of forest management during the socialist period and a lack of information and communication between the state forestry services (SFS) and the PFO. There are no adequate working methods available within the SFS such as participatory approaches to cope with the new situation, including the very large and increasing number of PFO. New extension methods are needed to increase the work efficiency of foresters.

Objective and Strategy

The Project will establish the essential requirements to support the development of profitable and sustainable private / community forestry. The Project will operate at regional (transboundary) level to serve the National Projects (NP) in each of the participating countries. The NP will basically aim at restructuring the SFS and possibly other institutions / organisation and at influencing the forestry policy and the legislation. This will be achieved by using the concept of public participation in forest management with emphasis on cooperation among forest services and forestry associations.

Outputs and main activities

• State forest services and the forest services of other organisations are enabled to meet the needs of the private / communal forestry sector concerning training, advisory and management support services. The project will support the establishment of an in-service training programme for relevant forestry services and the creation of a country specific training and extension system for private forest owners and community users.

• Private forest owners and community users are able and encouraged to establish forest owner associations. The project will support the relevant state and private forestry services to inform, train and advise private forest owners and community users in view of building associations.

• Essential requirements are integrated in the institutional framework to meet the needs of private forest owners and community users. The project will introduce participatory methods in all parts of the institutional framework and support their full integration in work routine and support the preparation of proposals to adapt the forestry policy to needs of the private / community forestry sector

"Strengthening Biodiversity Conservation Aspects of Private and Community Forestry in the EU Accession Countries in Central and Eastern Europe"

Background

IUCN Regional Office for Europe (ROfE) recognizes that to ensure the future of biodiversity in Central and Eastern Europe, negative impacts from privatisation processes, transition of national economies, and the EU Accession must be acknowledge and minimized. An inextricable aspect of this process is to maximise the benefit of EU Accession through facilitating and promoting sustainable forest management.

This IUCN ROfE project, over a four year period, aims to implement the inclusion of biodiversity aspects on the agenda of forestry operations and forest owner associations in 10 project countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia). The Main beneficiaries are sought to be the over 3 million new private forest owner in the project countries, who will be addressed through the national Forest Owner Associations (FOA) and the state and private Forest Extension Services (FES).

Objectives

The project has two main objectives:

• To encourage and enable private and communal forest operators to include nature conservation objectives into forest management, including exploring financial incentives;
• To strengthen the role of the civil society in the political debate on Sustainable Forest Management in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and in an enlarged EU.

Outputs and activities

Through country-specific national workshops, Training-of-Trainers (TOT) and, facilitating dialogues between IUCN Communication experts, the State Forest Services (FES) and to the National Forest Owner Associations (FOA) on biodiversity aspects of sustainable forest management, IUCN anticipates the following project outputs:

• Forest owner associations are encouraged and enabled to integrate nature conservation aspects into their organisational agenda;
• Effective communication of nature conservation aspects is integrated into the communication strategy of the Forest Extension Services;
• Forest Extension Services are enabled to provide technical advice on specific nature conservation issues.

Selected main activities over the 4-year period will be:

• Creation a network of stakeholders as national project group, including one representative from forest owners, nature conservation and Forest Extension Services;
• Identification of demonstration plots for low input (close to nature) forestry (e.g. ProSilva plots);
• Design of national seminars according to the national needs of forest owners on information about nature conservation/ecological forestry topics;
• Organisation of seminars by the focal points and their organising committee, with support from the project office;
• Facilitate the organisation of an international thematic Forest Owners seminar for networking and information sharing;
• Organisation of an international symposium addressing ¿Biodiversity in Forest Management in CEEC¿;
• Conduct a participatory gap analysis of the existing communication strategy in relation with nature conservation issues, including activities and material developed;
• Elaborate a new or improve the existing communication strategy: how to integrate nature conservation into the extension system, including identification of most suitable activities, methods and tools for the implementation of the strategy;
• Prepare and deliver an in-service training for the FES on communication nature conservation and on participatory approach
• Prepare TOT modules on nature conservation issues for workshops and seminars organised by and for the FES
• Develop and implement training modules for forest owners on biodiversity and nature conservation aspects.
• Facilitate discussion on financial instruments to support SFM through national and international workshops (within regional country groups), and as part of an international symposium
• Communicate the results to the European Commission and discuss with DG Agriculture, Enlargement, Regional Policy and Environment.

Project activities will be adapted to the very different national situations in the 10 project countries.

To support the projects long-term sustainability, IUCN will support the development of a national and international data base of experts who can be consulted on these and other specific themes:

• Funding opportunities for SFM and nature conservation through national and community funding mechanisms;
• Natura 2000 and forest management;
• Afforestation and LULUCF under the Kyoto Protocol;
• Local Agenda 21;
• Low input (close to nature forestry) forest management.