When forest private ownership turns into collective-choices property rights

Abstract

When analyzing the structure of the ownership in a country, usually two forms of ownership are mentioned, the public and the private forest ownership. However, due to the cultural, historical and political meaning of ownership in each country, the reference to only the form of ownership is not informative enough to understanding forest-related practices in different countries. To enlighten the content of the private ownership on forests, the paper implements an analytical frame combining both the legal and the economic approach of ownership and property rights. Using a qualitative approach, harvesting and management rights over forests are analyzed in a strong regulatory context of policies for sustainable forest management in Romania. The results show that legal constrains from forest laws may determine an alteration of the economic content of the ownership at the point that the management and decision system turned into collectivechoice decision system. Therefore forest owners share their management rights on timber harvesting with the State, the main instrument for this joint decision-making being the forest management plan. The findings indicate that the forest owners are those who bear the costs of institutional re-organization and long learning processes.