South Caucasus Regional Land Policy Conference

Tbilisi, Georgia - February 2003

Working Together in Forestry
Stavari Pllaha - Transborder Wildlife, Albania - willlife@albmail.com

After the social-political changes in ALBANIA, we gradually began to understand that money would not come from the sky but through new ideas. We tried to think how to find money building new policies and actions, which could diminish the poverty, stimulate increasing of productivities and protect the environment.

In Albania land distribution finished ten years ago. The agricultural land is almost fully privatized. The peasants have access to use and maintain agricultural land but they are still poor, especially in mountainous areas. The reasons:

• The land is insufficient.

• The land is poor.

• The land is fragmentized.

• There is no irrigation system.

• It is very difficult to use machinery and other equipment.

We think other alternatives relating to natural resources and land reform must be implemented. For mountainous areas Forest and Pasture Land Reform is very important. In this framework communal forestry (used by communities) must be taken into consideration.

Why communal forest in Albania:

• It relies on Albanian Forest Legislation as a new policy in forest management, which intends to transfer state forest and pasture for community use.
• It facilitates access to use forest and pasture resources by local people.
• It involves local people in forest and pasture management through wide participation of local people in decision-making and accountability.
• It links forest and pasture resources to local people's interest.

After Albanian legislation 40% of state forest will be in use of Commune, village or peasants who live in the village.

The first steps we to succeed were:

• Contacting community to know old tradition (before socialism time) of indigenous people in forest and pasture management
• Establishment of forest and pasture commissions for each village, which will be responsible for distribution of forest and pasture (the community of the villages elected the village's commissions).
• Studying the social economic situation of local people (land use, agriculture and husbandry, other economic activities in the area, infrastructure and natural resources).

We think the main factors that lead to successful results in forest transfer in use of local people are:

Better participation of the community in decision-making easier to implement successfully Land Reform.

 Some constrains and obstacle for us:

• The actual communal forestry policy is too centralized.

• The lack of legal acts and regulations for communal forestry.

• Barriers and limitation on the rights of forest users with reference to exploit forest and other natural resources.

• Obstacle caused Real Estate Registration Office.