Social capital in rural areas and governance of economic instruments for Non-Wood Forest Products: the case of mushrooms in Catalonia

The concept of social capital (SC) within the forest governance field encompasses networks, norms and values of local communities that determine cooperation and contribute to their development. The linkages among community characteristics affect the implementation of forest policy instruments, and enlighten on the variables policy-makers and practitioners have to put attention beyond traditional technical factors or individual incentives. A dynamic, nested model is proposed along the policy cycle, highlighting the relevant forest governance and SC variables related in a context where collective action is desirable. Institutions (i.e. norms) and networks are conceived as elements bridging the SC and governance divides. The case study of a mushroom picking permit introduction in the protected area of Poblet (north-eastern Spain) provides evidence of some relations of the model. The alignment of the traditional ecological knowledge between mushroom pickers and decision-makers seems to indicate a similar perception of the need for a governance reform. The Social Network Analysis illustrates the structural evolution of the decision-makers from the policy conception to the implementation phases. The structural SC dynamics jointly with the correlation of rather influential connections with local pickers denotes an accurate transmission of pickers’ preferences into the policy formulation phase. Moreover, the low trust towards foreign pickers underlies the positive discrimination of locals in the permit, given that outsider pickers are felt out of reach of the informal community enforcement means. Thus, the policy of a permit serves to align foreigners’ behaviour with that of the locals –perceived as sustainable. The synergies between the different SC dimensions probably signify the wide acceptance and engagement with the permit in its first years of implementation. Beyond non-wood forest products, this model applies in forest policies entailing cooperation among open-access resource users, or landowners’ coordination for adjacency externalities or upscaling. In addition, the perception of property (i.e. harvesting) rights and of pickers-caused nuisances (both tangible and intangible) shape the positioning of private forest owners regarding the wild mushroom governance. Forest owners widely advocate for the introduction of a specific regulation at the regional level; most of them support a picking fee that is reinvested in the forest tending; and half of them would like to establish a mushroom reserve with their neighbours. Socio-economic and ecological variables -like farming occupation, proximity to large cities and fungal productivity of the forest- influence their preferences

More fodder for the oven? Dealing with forest-related conflicts arising from the production and use of energy wood in Europe

Results from the COOL project201

Two decades of forest-related legislation changes in European countries analysed from a property rights perspective

In the last two decades, attention on forests and ownership rights has increased in different domains of international policy, particularly in relation to achieving the global sustainable development goals. This paper looks at the changes in forest-specific legislation applicable to regular productive forests, across 28 European countries. We compare the legal framework applicable in the mid-1990s with that applicable in 2015, using the Property Rights Index in Forestry (PRIF) to measure changes across time and space. The paper shows that forest owners in most western European countries already had high decision-making power in the mid-1990s, following deregulation trends from the 1980s; and for the next two decades, distribution of rights remained largely stable. For these countries, the content and direction of changes indicate that the main pressure on forest-focused legislation comes from environmental discourses (e.g. biodiversity and climate change policies). In contrast, former socialist countries in the mid-1990s gave lower decision-making powers to forest owners than in any of the Western Europe countries; over the next 20 years these show remarkable changes in management, exclusion and withdrawal rights. As a result of these changes, there is no longer a clear line between western and former socialist countries with respect to the national governance systems used to address private forest ownership. Nevertheless, with the exception of Baltic countries which have moved towards the western forest governance system, most of the former socialist countries still maintain a state-centred approach in private forest management. Overall, most of the changes we identified in the last two decades across Europe were recorded in the categories of management rights and exclusion rights. These changes reflect the general trend in European forest policies to expand and reinforce the landowners' individual rights, while preserving minimal rights for other categories of forest users; and to promote the use of financial instruments when targeting policy goals related to the environmental discourse

Civil society engaged in wildfires: Mediterranean forest fire volunteer groupings

In fire-prone areas such the Mediterranean basin, wildfire risk means a societal challenge. Governments in modern welfare states have generally addressed it through a “zero fire policy” focusing on suppression and professionalization. Such approach provides security to local populations, who in turn may detach from the socio-ecologic phenomenon of wildfire and become passive actors. In the face of increasingly virulent wildfires, local communities are often not prepared with consequent damages and casualties. Yet, some regions show pro-active locals organizing their efforts to tackle wildfires. These fire volunteer groups suppose a social innovation in rural communities that help in their adaptation to climate change. Going beyond homeowners’ preparedness, the actions of volunteers range from supporting firefighters’ efforts, first attack and/or year-round prevention. The investigation of these communities is in its infancy despite its practitioner and policy interest. In this study, we shed light on this civil society engagement across different Mediterranean forest settings, namely from predominantly public forest ownership in Greece, to predominantly private in Catalonia (Spain) and virtually entirely private in Portugal. Collecting data through a survey, the type of activities of these volunteer groups, their relations with fire and local actors (i.e. social capital) and trajectory have been analysed to find possible trends. Statistical results show that their portfolio of activities relates to their group size (i.e. available human resources) and their structural and relational social capital. Preliminary insights show an improvement in trust with fire and forest actors owing to the fire volunteer group establishment. No evidence has been found of forest area covered by fire volunteers, recent fire experience or variety in members’ profile to affect the type of activities. The results are discussed in the frame of social capital theory and suggestions for further research are put forward

The green side of social innovation: Using sustainable development goals to classify environmental impacts of rural grassroots initiatives

Social innovations are grassroots processes aiming to achieve impacts beyond an individual level and towards a broader societal good. The environmental dimension of impacts refers to any direct change to the environment resulting from social innovation activities, products, or services, which are not addressed by pre-existing systems. In this paper, we determine the role of social innovation in addressing environmental impacts by analyzing a database of social innovation examples in European and circum-Mediterranean rural areas, compiled within the H2020 Project SIMRA. We conceptualize the overall aim of environmentally-focused social innovation initiatives as furthering the sustainable development of their territories. To address the environmental impacts of initiatives in a structured way, we use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) classification, to describe social innovation environmental impacts in relation to specific targets. We analyzed 238 initiatives from the SIMRA catalog and associated initiative websites to identify and classify their direct environmental impacts. Our results indicate that 68% of the cases have at least one direct environmental impact that aligns with a SDG target. The most common impacts are related to sustainable natural resource management (SDGs target 12.2), sustainable food production systems (2.4), and equal access to land (2.3). This SDG-based classification proved to be a useful analytical tool for categorizing internationally policy-relevant environmental impacts of social innovations

Cognitive social capital and local forest governance: community ethnomycology grounding a mushroom picking permit design

Aim of study: The local ecological knowledge shared in rural communities shapes their norms for using their nearby open-access natural resources. We suggest a method to analyse this form of cognitive social capital with an application to a mushroom picking permit. Area of study: Poblet forest in Catalonia (NE Spain). Material and methods: We applied semi-structured questionnaires to pickers in four municipalities and to the governing body of the protected area. Our methodology assesses cognitive social capital combining three instruments: (i) inter-quartile ratio indexes for community cohesion, (ii) pair-wise comparisons across social groups: pickers and decision-makers (DM), and (iii) correlations for mental models linking perceived ecological, social and economic challenges with foreseen solutions. Main results: Analogous perceptions between DM and local pickers were found in most mushroom-related problems, which align with most picking permit design features. The perceived dissimilar behaviour between local and foreign pickers, the need for forest tending –addressing the wildfire risk–, and trash left in the forest are shared among pickers and DM. Moreover, some mental models of the DM showed statistically consistence. At the individual picker level, mushroom eco-literacy relates to family learning and proximity to DM, while links between pickers and DM correlate with increased forest profitability expectations. Research highlights: Strong convergence in cognitive indicators aggregated at the town level indicate a single hermeneutic community among local pickers, which seems to underlie the large permit acceptance but did not explain the differential permit uptake –thus, structural social capital emerges as complementary predictor

Forest-based bioenergy policies in five European countries: An explorative study of interactions with national and EU policies

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Two decades of forest-related legislation changes in European countries analysed from a property rights perspective

In the last two decades, attention on forests and ownership rights has increased in different domains of international policy, particularly in relation to achieving the global sustainable development goals. This paper looks at the changes in forest-specific legislation applicable to regular productive forests, across 28 European countries. We compare the legal framework applicable in the mid-1990s with that applicable in 2015, using the Property Rights Index in Forestry (PRIF) to measure changes across time and space

Ecosystem services from small forest patches in agricultural landscapes

In Europe,like in many temperate lowlands worldwide,forest has a long history of fragmentation and land use change. In many places,forest landscapes consist of patches of different quality,age,size and isolation,embedded in a more or less intensively managed agricultural matrix. As potential biodiversity islets,small forest patches (SFP) may deliver several crucial ecosystem services to human society,but they receive little attention compared to large,relatively intact forest patches. Beyond their role as a biodiversity reservoir,SFP provide important in situ services such as timber and wild food (game,edible plants and mushrooms) production. At the landscape scale,SFP may enhance the crop production via physical (obstacle against wind and floods) and biological (sources of pollinators and natural enemies) regulation,but may,on the other hand,also be involved in the spread of infectious diseases. Depending on their geographic location,SFP can also greatly influence the water cycle and contribute to supply high-quality water to agriculture and people. Globally,SFP are important carbon sinks and are involved in nutrient cycles,thus play a role in climate change mitigation. Cultural services are more related to landscape values than to SFP per se,but the latter may contribute to the construction of community identity. We conclude that SFP,as local biodiversity hotspots in degraded landscapes,have the potential to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services and may even be crucial for the ecological intensification of agro-ecosystems. There is thus an urgent need to increase our knowledge about the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services delivered by these SFP in agricultural landscapes

Improving access to research outcomes for innovation in agriculture and forestry: the VALERIE project

Many excellent results are obtained in agricultural and forestry research projects. but their practical adoption is often limited. The aim of the European project VALERIE is to increase the transfer and application of innovations produced by research in agriculture and forestry, by facilitating their integration into management practices. The project is still ongoing and the results illustrated in this paper are still temporary and subject to being improved. Here we present the methodology used in VALF,RIE to extract and summarise knowledge for innovation from research documents with the aim of making it available to final users through ask-Valerie.en; we also report on current progress. The tasks associated with extracting and summarising knowledge are centred on: i) an ontology; ii) a document base; and iii) a system (ask-Valerie.eu) that allows users to effectively search the document base. An ontology defines a set of concepts and the relations between them. The VALERIE ontology is built by experts in the agricultural and forestry domain and contains 6169 concepts (21st October 2016). The document base is the collection of documents in which the system searches. The VALERIE document base includes scientific and practical documents derived from various sources, Written in any of a number of languages. All documents contained in the document base are annotated using the ontology: each term (a word or a short phrase) in the document that matches a concept in the VALERIE-ontology is linked to that concept. Annotation is an automated process that takes place whenever a document is added to the document base. The document base contains 4278 documents (October 2016). Among them, there are 201 minifactsheets written by members of the VALERIE project, each describing an innovation with: a short description of the innovation, a list of correlated projects, and some links to scientific and practical documents. ask-Valerie.eu searches documents and fragments of text from the document base that address the user's query. ask-Vaterie.cu mimics the dialogue between a practitioner and an expert and achieves this functionality by: i) supporting the practitioner in articulating the question (it completes terms that the user starts to type and suggests other possibly relevant terms); ii) expanding the query using synonyms; iii) extracting and ranking text fragments from the documents