Forestry in the future CAP Rural development policy – from policy to practice

”Forestry in the future CAP/rural development policy – from policy to practice – Exchange of national experiences with view to the implementation of forestry measures”, 21-22.09.2006, Budapest

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Forestry in the future CAP

Rural development policy – from policy to practice

Exchange of national experiences with view to the implementation of forestry

measures

21-22 September 2006, Budapest, SEUR


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Rural Development in CEEC and CIS

Specific Issues, Approaches, FAO response

by

Volker Sasse, Forestry Officer

presented by

Tomasz Lonc, Policy Officer


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FAO mandate

• Gathering and dissemination of data and information

• Sharing policy expertise• Providing a meeting

place for nations• Bringing knowledge to

the field


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Priorities of 24th FAO Regional Conference for

Europe• Monitoring of implementation of the goals of the

World Food Summit• Prioritization of rural development and food

security issues in national development strategies• Food security, land rights, land markets• Conservation of plant genetic resources and

encouragement for benefit sharing


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SEUR mandate

• Monitoring and reporting• Identifying priority areas of action• Providing technical assistance to member

countries• Promoting the technical cooperation between

countries in transition and other partnership programmes

• Providing support services


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Work programme

• Agricultural Information Management• Farm Management and Agribusiness• Food Standards and Nutrition• Land Tenure and Rural Development• Livestock Sector Development• Forestry• Policy Assistance• Library and Information Services


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FAO/SEUR assistance to countries• Regular Programme

– Technical Cooperation Programme• Technical Cooperation among Countries in Transition

– Special Programme of Food Security• Extra- budgetary programme

– Government Cooperative Programme– Unilateral Trust Fund

http://www.fao.org/tc/Tca/Field_en.asp


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Twenty-Fifth Regional Conference for Europe

Strengthening Regional Cooperation and Assisting Countries in Controlling Highly

Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in Europe, including CIS Countries


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FAO does not believe that Avian Influenza is a self-contained problem. Global change factors, comprising

• expansion in trade and traffic, • climate change, • increases in consumption of animal protein by the middle income class in

emerging and transition economies, • the weakening of veterinary services infrastructure and • the abandonment of line management and centrally coordinated action are all believed to contribute to the global spread of an increasing number of

epizootics.Hence, transboundary animal diseases in general are jointly addressed by FAO and

OIE under the Global Framework for the progressive control of Transboundary Animal Diseases (GF-TAD). GF-TAD envisages, through a progressive strengthening of veterinary services worldwide, to halt the spread of emerging zoonotics and epizootics such as foot and mouth disease (FMD), Rift Valley Fever, African Swine Fever, Newcastle Disease, and Pest-des-Petits-Ruminants.

The FMD encroachment of Europe from West Asia and North Africa is the main focus of the European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (EU-FMD).


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Twenty-Fifth Regional Conference for Europe

Report on FAO Activities in the European Region

2004-05


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Major Programme 2.4: ForestryActivities addressed a broad range of issues in support of

sustainable forest management in the Region. Eleven workshops have been organized by the Sub-Regional Office for Europe (SEUR) in which most of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and CIS participated and which covered a broad range of issues e.g. policy options for storm damage management, assistance to the private forestry sector, coordination on forest land use related policies, sharing forest and market information, best practice in reforming policies and institutions, etc. These workshops were also organized in collaboration with relevant partners in the region (the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and the Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF)).


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Major Programme 2.4: ForestryThe European Forestry Sector Outlook studies were completed in 2005 while

the Forestry Outlook Study for West and Central Asia will be released in 2006. Within the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development in Mountain Regions Project (SARD-M), the activities conducted in Europe include an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of mountain policies inspired by Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) principles carried out by the Interim Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention (UNEP) in three Carpathian countries (Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine); a Regional/Carpathian Workshop on strengthening SARD-M Policies for the protection and sustainable development of the Carpathians organized jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), EUROMONTANA and SARD-M (Slovak Republic, October 2005); and support to EUROMONTANA’s Seminar on mountain positive externalities “Reaping the benefits of Europe’s precious places – Policies releasing the potential of mountain and remoter rural areas”(Aviemore, Scotland, November 2005).


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Major Programme 2.4: Forestry

Technical assistance and backstopping was provided to (i) Serbia and Montenegro for the development of the forest sector (GCP/FRY/003/FIN); (ii) Kosovo for implementing a forest sector development programme (GCP/KOS/004/SWE); (iii) Croatia for capacity building for forest fire prevention (TCP/CRO/3001); (iv) Hungary for supporting the design and development of innovative forest management schemes (TCP/HUN/3003(A)); (v) TFYR Macedonia for institutional development and capacity building in forestry and forest industry subsectors (TCP/MCD/3002); and (vi) Poland for sustainable mountain development (TCP/POL/3004).


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Twenty-Fifth FAO Regional Conference for Europe

UN System and FAO ApproachContribution of Rural Development in Meeting

the World Food Summit (WFS)/Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Region


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Numerous studies have provided evidence that the impact of economic growth on reducing hunger and poverty depends as much on the nature of the growth as on its scale and speed.

Analysis of data found that growth in rural areas and in the agriculture sector had a much greater impact on reducing poverty than did urban and industrial growth (FAO, 2005a). Analysis of the relationship between growth and reduction in hunger reveals a similar pattern.

These and other examples tend to support the conclusion that economic growth alone is important, but not sufficient to reduce hunger, and that growth in the agriculture and rural sector has a greater impact in reducing poverty and hunger than do urban and industrial growth.


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Rural development in Central and Eastern EuropeThough rural areas often have high environmental amenities, they are often disadvantaged in

terms of incomes and employment opportunities, out migration of young and skilled people and low population densities. Some of the reasons for these adverse circumstances are the lack of agglomeration advantages enjoyed by urban areas, poorly developed infrastructure and human capital and structural changes in the economy towards a growing importance of services and globalization. In addition to these general problems affecting rural areas, European countries have had additional problems caused by the transition from socialist planning towards a market economy.

Transition brought significant losses of employment opportunities in agriculture and agriculture-related business, including processing, as well as in industry in rural areas in the 1990s. Other legacies of the socialist past include mono-structured regional employment opportunities, high average age of the rural population and degraded rural social infrastructure and lack of rural services. Transition has also contributed to more pronounced economic differentiation, including an increase in rural-urban income disparities.

The objective of rural development policies in Europe is to overcome these difficulties through pro-poor growth aimed at reducing the disparities between levels of development in rural and urban areas. The overall goals of rural development are to strengthen economic growth as well as to make it more inclusive and pro-poor. Rural development measures in Europe have included land reform and land consolidation; rural infrastructure and services improvement; upgrading of food safety regulations, legislation, institutions and governance to better approximate or meet EU standards; decentralization of decision making for improved regional and rural policy-making and associated tax and public sector reform; rural education curriculum reform; and agri-environmental policies aimed at protecting and preserving natural landscape.

Source: Network of Independent Agricultural Experts in the CEE Candidate Countries, 2004. The Future of Rural Areas in an Enlarged EU: Perspectives of the New Member States in Central and Eastern Europe and Bulgaria and Romania.


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In recent years, however, the main focus of rural development policies has been on making rural areas more competitive (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2005). The objectives of measures undertaken under this concept are the increase of rural enterprise productivity and the fostering of rural private investment. The means toward these ends are policies aimed at mitigating constraints on competitiveness, such as (i) opening new markets for agricultural producers, (ii) improving the state of knowledge and practice in agricultural technologies and marketing, (iii) improving the enabling environment for rural producers and (iv) improving the quality of rural services as well as the overall level of amenities in rural areas. The underlying assumptions of rural development policies are that rural areas can offer place-specific amenities which are not offered in urban areas and that there is unexploited development potential in rural regions requiring improvements in the above areas in order to attain its full possibility.


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Environmental sustainabilityFAO regularly monitors the world’s forests through the Forest Resources

Assessment Programme. Data on “forest cover” (the proportion of land area covered by forest) are used to monitor one of the two targets related to ensuring environmental sustainability (MDG 7) on “reversing the loss of environmental resources.” 5 Estimates of changes in forest cover over time provide an indication of the demand for land for forestry and other uses, and may also illustrate the impact of significant environmental disasters and disturbances on forest ecosystems.

Forest cover has been relatively stable in the non-EU European countries from 1990 to 2005 with the exception of Albania, Armenia, Moldova and Tajikistan. In these countries the forest cover area shrank by 15 to 22 percent between 2000 and 2005. Reductions in forest cover occur either through deforestation or natural disasters due to forest fires, insects or diseases, through overexploitation of forest products, poor harvesting and management practices or as a result of extreme climatic events (e.g. drought, frost, storms and floods). A decrease in forest cover may have far reaching social, economic and environmental consequences.


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In contrast to other regions, forest cover in the new EU countries has increased substantially. This is possibly due to the large-scale adjustment of land use connected with the transition from collective to private agriculture. There was a considerable reduction in the land area used for agricultural production as a result of these changes in the 1990s. FAO’s role in monitoring Target 9 of MDG 7 does not only relate to the indicator on forestry coverage. FAO also chairs the Sub-group on Environment, an inter-agency assembly charged with providing information for reviews of progress in reaching MDG targets, and collaborates with other UN and non- UN agencies in the development of further indicators related to environmental sustainability.


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Twenty-Fifth FAO Regional Conference for Europe

34th Session of the FAO European Commission on Agriculture (ECA)

The Role of Agriculture and Rural Development in

Revitalizing Abandoned/Depopulated Areas


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The reformed rural development policy of the EU was not designed to simply ensure its consistency with the WTO rules

Rural development policy has a much wider scope to fulfil, such as

• contributing to economic growth and employment opportunities,

• to satisfy consumer demand for food quality and• to provide attractive livelihoods.


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The ECA took note that in the EU the viability of rural areas is associated with the repopulation of rural areas, driven by the service and manufacturing sector and not only agriculture. Abandonment, depopulation and ageing represent only one aspect, the most traditional one of the evolution of rural areas.


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Revitalization for nature – preservation of biodiversity:• First priority should be given to policies that compensate the

production of a public good and as second priority, policies that foster diversification in order to benefit from the nature potential through rural tourism, organic farming, collection of nonwood products, etc.

Revitalization for recreation – preservation of quality of life and biodiversity:

• Market based incentives have highest priority in these areas. As second priority, the production of some public goods and services has to be compensated in order to make the revitalization sustainable

Revitalization for economic development – develop rural areas for economic reasons and create synergies with other sectors

• In these areas, price mechanism should play the major role; combined with diversification these policies should enable the rural economy to become the engine of a sustainable revitalization of the area. There are only a few public goods functions that would have to be compensated.

Recommendations (ECA)


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• However, there are still many unanswered questions and more research is necessary. Therefore, one of the first steps could be to organize a “Pan-European Conference on Revitalization of Abandoned Land and Depopulated Areas” in close collaboration with other international and European organizations and actors in this area.

• It would identify agricultural and rural development policies and programmes for abandoned and depopulated regions that are WTO compatible and efficient in terms of revitalization. Furthermore, a research programme on the efficiency of programmes and measures and the economic impact of land abandonment and depopulation and the cost-benefit of revitalization policies, could prepare the ground for discussion and stimulate international debate on this issue.


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General Subregional Framework – some observations

• Low GDP/capita but in last 15 years higher growth rates than in Western Europe

• Convergence towards EU structures and institutions

• Relatively low awareness about new challenges in rural areas development, particularly social and environmental issues

Rural Development


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Framework for Rural Development – some ideas

• So far, historically focus on agriculture, less emphasis on forestry and small-scale manufacturing and services

• High income and standard of living difference between rural and urban areas

• Significant migration processes especially in transition and adjustment period.


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Framework for Agricultural Policy • Privatisation/restitution in nearly all countries of

the sub-region• Emergence of small-scale holdings, with negative

economic efficiency implications and a growing sector of large-scale commercial farms

• Increasing overall sector productivity, with implications for labor decline and more intensive land use

• Imports of agriculture products from the West and parallel expansion of exports including value added


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Framework for Forestry • Privatisation/restitution of a significant share of

forest land in CEEC, not yet in CIS• Small-scale private holdings combined with acute

lack of silviculture skills• Management of state forestry through the public

budget (outsourced only in a few countries)• Increasing imports of wood products, particularly

from Eastern Europe• Traditions: Wooden housing and wood for fuel


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Objectives in rural development policies • Base: Analysis on societal needs in a participatory

way, involving the major stakeholders in rural development

Preliminary: • Reduce migration pressure on urban areas• Satisfy growing demands for agriculture and forest

products• Provide social and environmental services + public

goods


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Policy scenarios • Business as usual (++)

a. Market driven restructuring of rural areas and activitiesb. Continuing migration and pressure on urban areasc. But low environmental impacts: natural regeneration of

forests, which is ongoing in many Eastern European countries on abandoned agriculture land

• Focus on social and environmental impacts (+++)– But input is limited: see item c. above

• Focus on market potential only (+)


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Approaches • Capacity building on rural area policies and market

issues (++++)• Infrastructure development (++)• Land consolidation, particularly agricultural land (+)• Public interventions (e.g. subsidies) for production

(- -) and investments (-)• Public interventions to promote social and

environmental benefits provide in rural areas (++)


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FAO response • Directed towards non-EU member countries• Focus on capacity building

– FAO Technical Cooperation Programme projects• Up to $ 400,000, 2 years duration maximum, technical assistance

only

– National Investment Programmes – e.g. World Bank sector loans– National Forest Program Facility (NFP)

• Focus on participatory approaches in designing policies (max: $ 400,000 over three years)


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TCP (examples)

Country POLAND

Project title Sustainable Mountain Development

Timing July 2005 – February 2007

Budget US$ 283,000

Key objectives - to increase the capacity of mountain stakeholders through networking, outreach, advocacy and training to develop and implement sustainable development strategies and programmes in mountain regions

- to formulate an investment programme for sustainable mountain development that would include the development of a national strategy for mountain regions as well as a regional (multinational) component.

- to establish a pilot project in the Klodzko Valley in the Sudety Mountains that demonstrates an integrated approach to sustainable mountain development, builds capacity, improves the livelihoods of mountain people, protects the mountain environment and strengthens local institutional structures.


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TCP (examples) Country ROMANIA

Project title Grassland Ecosystems from the Mountain and Related Farm Products

Timing June 2002 – October 2003

Budget US$ 128,000

Key objectives - to improve mountain grassland maintenance, management and productivity,- to enhance the transfer of technology to farmers,- to aid the development of mountain organic farming- to utilize the experience gained from a previous three-country mountain grassland

project


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TCP (examples)Country HUNGARY

Project title Support to the design and development of innovative forest management schemes

Timing November 2004 – June 2006

Budget US$ 271 000

Key objectives -analyse existing and alternative silvicultural and forest harvesting systems with a view to selecting the most appropriate solution to specific circumstances;develop multifunctional forest management models adapted to different biophysical and socio-economic conditions;

-develop improved marketing strategies for wood and non-wood goods and services;

-strengthen the capacity to mange forests for multiple uses, taking into account their productive and protective functions as well as recreational demands


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FAO Publications (examples) • Land Consolidation and Rural Development

(English) Palmer, D, Evtimov, V. 2005• The Design of Land Consolidation Pilot Projects in

Central and Eastern Europe (English) /FAO Land Tenure Studies/ 2003

• Rural Property Tax Systems in Central and Eastern Europe (English) /FAO Land Tenure Studies/ 2002


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FAO Publications (examples)

• FAO Experience and Main Thrusts in Rural Development in the EU Accession Countries (English) Juhasz, J., Funes, S. 2000

• Extension Advisory Services in Central and Eastern Europe (English) Adams, G., 2000

• Agricultural and Rural Development Policies between Market Orientation and Protectionism in CEECs (English) Budavari, J.V. 1996


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Documents

Forestry in the future CAP Rural development policy – from policy to practice