Sustainable Forest Management: Experience from the Experiment on Common Pool Resources

Abstract

"Forests cover around 60% of the total surface of Slovenia and so represent the biggest renewable resource which has important economic, environmental and social functions. Irrespective on the type of ownership (80 % of forests in Slovenia are privately owned) there are two particularities in Slovenia, affecting forest management: 1. free access to forests and 2. management has to be performed according to the plan approved by ministry responsible for forestry. In practice this mean that forest owners are limited in using their forest. Maximisation of their profit is not possible if harvesting decisions would lead to overexploitation and would hurt sustainable and close to nature principles of forest management even though this may increase harvesting costs. Social changes, reduced dependency on forest and processes of transition and restitution during last two decades have risen sensitivity of private ownerships rights. With research we wanted to test how nowadays the forest owners value the existing sustainable forest management and if difference between non-experienced and experienced forest users and owners exists in their behaviour. For this purposes we carried out a web based survey of standpoints in this issue and a behavioural economic experiment in the next step of pilot research. Respondents were selected from the three types of stakeholders: study circle groups, university students and from an agrarian common. The goal of the experiment was to test if the sustainable management is a strategy that the actors find as a long term best practice, or it is respected because of the existing state rules."