The role of forest policy in Mediterranean mountain community lands: A review of the decentralization processes in European countries

Abstract

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a vast part of the mountain forests of Mediterranean counties was created by the State Forest Services. Through afforestation with the introduction of the Forest Regime, a management system was created to protect water and soil on centralized community land, which in turn resulted in a valuable cultural and natural heritage and an important place for environmental protection and forestry activities. Since the second half of the last century, in some countries, under the influence of several political and economic processes, these community forests (CF) lands were returned to rural communities and/or local authorities, while in other countries their governance was decentralized to the municipal level. Consequently, multiple tenure land regimes developed and continued to emerge at national or regional levels, increasing the diversity of stakeholders involved in their management. However, the efficiency of such transformations in the management of Mediterranean mountain forests is largely unknown. The purpose of this review is to analyse and compare the development and management of CF in five large Mediterranean countries. By extracting and examining information from more than two hundred documents and using the cognitive hierarchy theory we show the roles and shifts of anthropocentric and ecocentric values in the resource management decision-making process by communities, the Forest Services and other stakeholders. Special attention is given to the effect of CF regarding reducing hydrological risks in mountainous regions of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece in the past and increasing fire risk in the present because of a shift in management values. As a result of this analysis, several suggestions are proposed to increase the sustainability of CF by balancing anthropocentric and ecocentric management values.