Outlook for the Formation of Private Forest Owners' Associations in the Western Balkan Region

Abstract

The private forest owners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia are not organized in strong independent interest organizations, although their forest cover varies between 10% of the total area in Macedonia and 52% in Serbia. Private forest owners' interests are weakly represented in national forest policy and most of the power is still in the hands of the public forest administration. This situation does not comply with democratic political systems. The PRIFORT project tries to provide a better understanding of the characteristics of private forest owners in the region. Prevailing interest group theories are scrutinized by surveys of private forest owners and in-depth interviews of forest policy decision makers. The results indicate that although the number of private forest owners is large, there are good preconditions for creating independent private forest owners' interest associations (PFOAs). There is a clear demand of forest owners in an interest organization for services in sustainable forest management and better representation of their interests in national forest policy. Furthermore, many private forest owners in each country are prepared to engage themselves in the formation of independent interest groups. Finally, there is empirical evidence that the attitudes of forest policy makers have changed in favour of PFOAs in all four countries.