Abstract

ForewordThe structure of forest ownership in European countries has been changing during the last decades due to various societal and political developments. Structural changes of agriculture, as well as changing lifestyles, motivations and attitudes of owners are particularly important in the western and northern part of Europe; while in eastern and south-eastern Europe changes in political regimes and related processes such as restitution of forest land and the privatisation of forest industries stipulated change. Apart from these causes, afforestation and inheritance policies have influenced the changes in ownership structure in many European countries. Altogether this has led to an increased number of private forest owners across Europe. It is not only the rise in the number of private forest owners, but also a growing share of so-called “new” forest owners, who often hold only small parcels, have no agricultural or forestry knowledge and no capacity or interest to manage their forests. In other regions, new community and private owners are bringing fresh interest and new objectives to forest management. Understanding the variety of existing ownership types, actual or appropriate forest management approaches, and the interrelations with policy, are of fundamental importance for forestry, but is an often neglected research area. The European COST Action FP1201 FOREST LAND OWNERSHIP CHANGES IN EUROPE: SIGNIFICANCE FOR MANAGEMENT AND POLICY (FACESMAP) aims to bring together the state-of-knowledge in this field across Europe and can build on expertise from 30 participating countries. Drawing on an evidence review across these countries, the objectives of the Action are as follows: (1) To analyse attitudes and constraints of different forest owner types in Europe and the ongoing changes (2) To explore innovative management approaches for new forest owner types (3) To study effective policy instruments with a comparative analysis approach (4) To draw conclusions and recommendations for forest-related policies, forest management practice, further education and future research. This book of proceedings covers a broad range of topics related to the forest ownership change. It comes at mid-term of the Action and has the aim to present some of the first findings of the FACESMAP COST Action to a wider audience. Papers presented in this book have been produced during the first two years of the Action, and are the result of various interactions and tools implemented in the Action, such as meetings, training school and short term scientific missions. In the first section, conceptual papers are presented which picture the state-of-the-art in three topical fields, corresponding to the working groups’ (WGs) interest: forest ownership types and motives (WG1); new forest management approaches (WG2); and forest owner related policies (WG3). These papers have been developed based on literature reviews as well as discussions in the round of experts.In the second section, called ‘methods and findings’, we present papers that were produced in the Action as part of various activities. One of the papers is based on a key-note presentation held at a WG meeting and presents results of the EU research project INTEGRAL (by Metodi Sotirov). One paper was developed in the framework of a short term scientific mission (by Špela Pezdevšek Malovrh and Mersudin Avdibegovic). This is followed by a collection of papers that were produced in the framework of a Training School on Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods, organized by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå as part of the Action. The training school covered a variety of qualitative methods for data collection, analysis by manual and software usage, and interpretation in a cross-country comparison context. Particular focus was given to interviews, focus groups, learning from interaction with stakeholders (so called “Travellab”), construction of typologies, research ethics and how to reflect critically on the research results and the sources used. The so-calledFOREWORD Mid-term Proceedings of the COST Action FP1201 FACESMAPIITravellab is an innovative method supporting researchers through various structured stakeholder interaction during forest walks and in a workshop setting. Posters of the training school participants that had been presented at the FACESMAP COST Action WG meeting in Zagreb, Croatia, in June 2015, are annexed to the papers. The presented papers have not been subject to an external review process. The aim of the proceeding is to give interested audience insight into ongoing activities in the frame of the Action. The final outputs of the Action will be published in further reports and a number of peer-reviewed papers in the last phase of the Action.” Further information on all the activities of the Action and the outputs you can find at the Action website http://facesmap.boku.ac.at. We would like to thank all contributors to this book of proceedings and to all participants of the FACESMAP COST Action for their collaboration and support. Sincerely, Editors

Published in

ISBN: 978-3-900932-30-5
Publisher: European Forest Institute Central-East and South-East European Regional Office

SLU Editors

• Lidestav, Gun

  • Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/69978