Abstract
Private forests are widespread in Europe providing a range of ecosystem services of significant value to society, and there are calls for novel policies to enhance their provision and to face the challenges of environmental changes. Such policies need to acknowledge the importance of private forests, and importantly they need to be based on a deep understanding of how property rights held by private forest owners vary across Europe. We collected and analysed data on the content of property rights based on formal legal requirements existing in 31 European jurisdictions. To allow a comparison across jurisdictions, we constructed an original Property Rights Index for Forestry encompassing five rights domains (access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation). We documented substantial variation of the private forest owners’ rights, and notably to i) make decisions in operational management and the formulation of management goals, ii) withdraw timber resources from their forest, and iii) exclude others from the use of forest resources. We identified broad relations between the scope for decision making of private forest owners and jurisdictions’ former socio-political background and geographical distribution. The variation in the content of property rights has implications for the implementation of international environmental policies, and stresses the need for tailored policy instruments, when addressing European society’s rural development, the bioeconomy, climate change mitigation measures and nature protection strategies.
Highlights
Forests account for 32.2% of the European territory (FOREST EUROPE, 2015), providing important environmental services and economic benefits (Mori et al, 2016)
Looking at the regional division of countries according to FOREST EUROPE (2015), the analysis shows that Private forest owners’ (PFOs) in the South-Eastern region have the lowest degree of freedom in decision making, in comparison to Central-Eastern Europe which has greater ownership rights, in the category of exclusion
Owning a forest in FYR Macedonia obviously means something different from owning a forest in the Netherlands. These differences manifest themselves in a number of different ways ranging from the way PFOs are allowed to put forest products on to markets, to the imposition of environmental regulations and to the governance of forests in general
Summary
Forests account for 32.2% of the European territory (FOREST EUROPE, 2015), providing important environmental services and economic benefits (Mori et al, 2016). Contemporary policy on private forest management is guided by sustainable forest management concepts (Fares et al, 2015). Depending on the region and forest type, these emphasise different aspects of sustainability, such as “sustainable yield” which focuses on sustained timber production, “multi-purpose forestry” which highlights multiple goods and services, or “ecosystem management” which stresses the status and evolution of forest ecosystems (Winkel et al, 2009). Or regionally-based regulatory frameworks influence the de jure property rights distribution and they impact on the economic and procedural aspects of forest management (Cubbage et al, 2007). The diversity of national, legal, cultural and historic contexts has led to different levels of restrictions on the management of private forestland, establishing the duties and responsibilities governing forest managers, owners and users (Krott, 2005)
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