engleski

Forest policy changes and actual needs of decision makers in Croatia

Forest policy in Croatia, as future EU member, has recently undergone some changes. The aim of this paper is to present forest policy changes in Croatia and perceptions of decision-makers with regard to these changes. Our interest was focuses on how they perceive their role in changing socioeconomic frame conditions and what decision support tools they need for sustainable forest management (SFM). SEE-ERA.NET’ s project REFORMAN, which gathered scientists from six European countries (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Serbia and Slovenia), was aiming at better understanding of present structure of forestry sector in these countries and identifying new forest policy processes emerging on the horizon, and this paper presents only research addressing Croatia. Research was conducted in two stages combining semi-structured web-questionnaire and in-depth interviews with forestry sector’ s decision makers, in both using closed, open-ended and rank questions. Forest certification (FSC) and implementation of Natura 2000 were perceived as most important international processes influencing Croatian forestry sector, as well as recent changes in national forestry legislation. Climate change, changes in water balance and increased pressure from urbanization and globalization were identified as main global threats to cope with, for which Croatian forestry sector found itself averagely capable. In-depth interviews with decision makers revealed great need for completing existing databases and standardisation of data formats in order to support SFM. Increased public interest in forestry and especially NWFP shows need for change in usual decision making procedures, thereby tools suggested by decision makers could help achieving it.

forest policy; international processes; decision makers; web-questionnaire; in-depth interview; users’ needs; tools; SFM

nije evidentirano