The Role of European Forest Municipalities and Local Communities in the Management of Mountain Forests

Abstract

"The paper provides an overview of the retrospective and current role of forest municipalities and local forest communities in the conservation and management of their natural resources in different countries of Europe.

"With a special focus in mountain areas, where natural resources are often, and world wide, held in common or nominally by the state rather than privately owned (TMI, FAO, 1997), different examples are examined and compared (Zingari, 1998).

"Interactions between natural resources, institutional arrangements and cultural frameworks which are consistent in the conservation and management are highlighted (Cole & Wolf, 1993).

"Socio-economic and environmental trends will be reviewed in mountain forest communities, identifying issues, factors and patterns and processes of interdependencies between mountain and lowland populations, including conflicting interests in exploitation, encroachment and external changes (Zingari, 2000, in press).

"In view of drawing lessons from a wider comparative approach to European mountain resources use, both on a synchronic and a diachronic level, some research opportunities are outlined (Price, 2000, in press).

"Finally, the experience carried out on mountain forest in Europe within the institutional network linked to the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe is presented and commented, in the light of major international initiatives aiming at raising the awareness on the natural, economic, institutional and cultural fragility of most of the mountain regions worldwide."