Forest policy and land planning policy in Spain: a regional approach

Abstract

Abstract The present Spanish model of political and institutional organisation as a federal state has been developed since the Constitution of 1978. Until this time, the extremely centralised forest policy has been one of the policies which has induced most relevant territorial consequences. Due to the constitution, the regions received a large number of political and administrative competences, land planning policy and forest management amongst them. Coinciding with the emergence of the new land planning policy, the forest policy suffered an identity crisis due to a lack of renovation of its basis. The processes followed by the Comunidades Autonomas (Autonomous Communities) for the definition of Regional Forest Programmes (RFPs), within the context of European policies set within the framework provided by international agreements, have provided an opportunity to reform the Spanish forest policy into a new de-centralised administrative system. This paper aims to provide a typology of the Spanish RFPs and to analyse their integration in the regional land planning systems. The issue of Spanish RFPs substantiveness is then examined throughout the consideration of the territorial factor in the RFPs and the relationships between forest policies and land planning policies in Spanish regions. In short, the study tries to highlight the co-ordination difficulties found between RFPs, of a sectoral nature, and land planning programmes, of territorial nature, despite the fact that the responsibility of both programmes falls upon the same governmental level. In Spanish Autonomous Communities, the regional environmental authority is responsible for RFPs while the regional civil engineering authority is responsible for the land planning programmes. The present research study evidences that this administrative structure implies a co-ordination handicap between both policy processes which has a remarkable influence on the substantiveness of Spanish RFPs.