Nature and landscape conservation in transition in central and south-eastern Europe

European EnvironmentEur. Env. 10, 211–219 (2000)

NATURE AND LANDSCAPECONSERVATION INTRANSITION IN CENTRALAND SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Andrew Tickle* and Richard Clarke

Centre for European Protected Area Research, Birkbeck College,University of London, UK

The collapse of socialism in central andeastern Europe and the transition tomarket-based democracies has hadfar-reaching effects on many aspects ofenvironmental policy and management.This paper discusses key issues fornature and landscape conservation in thelight of this transition and the likelyenlargement of the European Union toinclude former socialist states. Casestudies from two contrasting models offormer socialist polities – the CzechRepublic and Slovenia – highlight theneed to analyse the current transition inthe light of specific historic trajectories.Nevertheless, despite clear differencesbetween protected area systems andtheir management in the two countries,clear commonalities relating topost-socialist transition emerge – notablyin relation to issues surrounding landownership, new structures of statepower, and developments in civilsociety. These issues are then discussedin relation to further likely transitions asthe two countries seek to join theEuropean Union. Copyright © 2000 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERPEnvironment.

INTRODUCTION

Protected areas are parts of the planet’ssurface with de jure or de facto protectionfrom development or other activities

likely to damage their natural, landscape orcultural resources. Such areas range from siteswith international designation such as UN-ESCO Biosphere Reserves and World Her-itage Sites, through national parks and naturereserves, to urban parks and other sites,which, by reason of designation (such asgreen belt) or use (such as cemeteries), haveparticular natural, cultural, aesthetic or recre-ational value. The formal introduction of suchprotected areas in the socialist countries ofeastern Europe generally predates similar sys-tems in western capitalist states (Weiner, 1988,2000), but the protection offered by designa-tion in the socialist period prior to 1989 hasbeen widely questioned and often beenshown to be lacking (see Komarov, 1978;Moldan, 1990; Cole, 1998). Comparable stud-ies of protected areas in capitalist states alsoshow that designation is not necessarily areliable safeguard against development orother incompatible activities (Bishop et al.,1995; Leitmann, 1998).

In western Europe – perhaps most easilycharacterized from a policy perspective as the15 states currently forming the EuropeanUnion (EU) – strenuous efforts have beenmade in the past two decades to link separatenational systems of protected areas into acoherent network. This emerging network, tobe known as Natura 2000, is enabled by the

* Correspondence to: Andrew Tickle, Director, Centre for Eu-ropean Protected Area Research, Birkbeck College, Universityof London, 26 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DQ, UK.

Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

A. TICKLE AND R. CLARKE

1979 Directive of the Council of the EuropeanEconomic Community on the Conservation ofBirds (79/409/EEC – more usually known asthe Birds Directive) and the 1992 Directive onthe Conservation of Natural and Semi-naturalHabitats of Flora and Fauna (the HabitatsDirective, 92/43/EEC). Natura 2000 will com-bine thousands of EU sites of especial signifi-cance for birds (Special Protected Areas orSPAs) or other species and habitats (SpecialAreas of Conservation or SACs). As the Envi-ronment Directorate-General (DGXI) of theEuropean Commission (EC) readily admits,progress in the implementation of the Birdsand Habitats Directives has been slow (EC,1998). This process now faces a significantfurther challenge in coping with the envis-aged enlargement of the EU to include theformer socialist states of central and easternEurope.

The research presented in this paper dis-cusses issues surrounding post-socialist tran-sition and EU enlargement in the field ofnature and landscape policy, from both theperspective of the applicant states and fromthat of the EU itself. It draws on case studymaterial from the Czech Republic (CR) andSlovenia (RS) to address three key questions:

� the relationship between protected areasand socioeconomic transition in post-socialist countries;

� the role of protected areas as a vehicle fornature and landscape conservation in theapproximation process leading to EUmembership and

� their relation to the implementation andcoherence of a wider European protectedareas system, including Natura 2000.

These questions derive from a wider studyof protected area policies in relation to theongoing socio-economic and political transi-tion in east-central and south-eastern Europe(see Clarke and Tickle, 1999; Tickle, 2000). Theoverall study is contextualized by a numberof major factors including changes in civilsociety, the role of the state and the emer-gence of new national identities from formerfederal polities. The research has been con-ducted primarily through questionnaires andsemi-structured interviews with key individu-

als including relevant government or stateofficials, protected area managers, local gov-ernment representatives and interested citizengroups (often environmental non-governmentorganizations or NGOs), combined with fieldvisits to the countries.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

As other studies of post-socialist statesdemonstrate, enhanced understanding oftransition issues can be usefully underpinnedby examining former socialist frameworks ofsocio-political organization and regulation(Pickles and Smith, 1998). Echoing such work,we also find value in the concept of ‘pathdependency’ (Stark, 1996), but note that pastpolities and policies do not control currentoutcomes in any rigid or pre-defined manner.They act rather more as contextual factors,influencing and constraining types of choiceand option. However in some areas of statepolicy, including environmental protection,overall patterns of organization and regula-tion have not necessarily been subject to ex-tensive, ‘shock-shift’ transformations – basedon neo-liberal, market-based principles – ashave been noted in other socio-political arenas(see for example Carter and Maik, 1999). Fornature and landscape conservation, this is pri-marily due to the continued perception thatnon-marketizable goods should be regulatedby the state (e.g. MZP CR, 1995) as well as byinertia in the processes of large scale landprivatization and restitution. Below thismacro-level policy, however, regulatorychange has in some instances been far reach-ing – at least in principle.

Recent work has demonstrated for the CR(Tickle, 2000) that the formal socialist regula-tion of landscape and nature conservationwas structured in a manner closely analogousto the sphere of industrial production withstrong vertically hierarchical networks linkingthe central party-state, ministries and researchinstitutes with a branch network of regionaland district offices dealing with actual siteprotection, planning and designation. This hi-erarchy was typical of the highly centralized

Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Eur. Env. 10, 211–219 (2000)

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CENTRAL AND SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

nature of planning within state socialism inthe former Czechoslovakia. Despite this, re-sponsibility for environmental protection wasfragmented between seven different min-istries with little co-ordination or oversight ata governmental or party level (Moldan, 1990).Environmental legislation was in consequencegenerally ineffective and applied without anoverall guiding framework. However, as hasbeen noted widely for a number of formersocialist countries (e.g. Cole, 1998), the rigidSoviet-based goal of economic developmentthrough investment in resource-intensiveheavy industry meant that investment in pro-duction was almost always favoured over en-vironmental considerations.

In contrast to the centralism of Czechoslo-vak planning and decision-making, landscapeand nature conservation – like most policyissues in the former Socialist Federal Republicof Yugoslavia (SFRJ) – was devolved to theconstituent republics, each of which had con-siderable political autonomy. This model ofregional self-management strongly distin-guished the non-aligned SFRJ from the Soviet-dominated socialist states of central andeastern Europe. Within each republic of theSFRJ, of which Slovenia was one, power wasfurther devolved to local authorities and self-managing economic units (Fisher, 1971; Jan-car, 1987). Moreover, in Slovenia (uniquely inthe constituent republics of the former SFRJ)the state body for nature protection – theInstitute for the Protection of Natural andCultural Heritage (responsible for documenta-tion, designation, advising on developmentproposals and implementation of regional or-dinances) – was itself organized as a networkof regional offices. In the context of landscapeand nature conservation, this decentralizationand local autonomy had dual effects. On theone hand it meant that environmental legisla-tion was often poorly implemented (or ig-nored) at a local level. However it also meantthat local (and sometimes national) oppositionwas on occasion able to frustrate large-scaledevelopment projects that were seen to bedetrimental to the local environment.

Today’s protected area systems in the CRand Slovenia were created predominantly af-ter the Second World War although both sys-

tems had their origins in areas designated inthe 19th century, when the countries wereunder Habsburg rule. Although the scale ofdesignation (by area) was more extensive inthe Czech part of Czechoslovakia at the endof the 1980s (13% of the land area comparedto 7% in Slovenia), the types of site and areadesignated were broadly similar. These in-cluded large scale areas designated mainly forlandscape protection such as National Parks(e.g. Triglav in Slovenia and Krkonose inCzechoslovakia), Protected Landscape Areas(in Czechoslovakia) and Landscape Parks(Slovenia) – complemented by a complexsuite of smaller sites (nature reserves andnatural monuments) designated for specificnatural, cultural and geological heritage fea-tures. As indicated previously, designation perse did not imply that these features survivedunaffected by development pressures. Datafrom both countries (Moldan, 1990; Jancar-Webster, 1993) show that the total stock of‘environmental capital’ declined in the post-war period in common with the trends seenin most ‘western’ capitalist states (Stannersand Bourdeau, 1995).

PROTECTED AREAS IN TRANSITION– KEY ISSUES

The collapse of the variant forms of ‘actuallyexisting’ socialism in Czechoslovakia andSFRJ brought widespread opportunities forchanges in environmental policy and manage-ment – most of which were positive. How-ever the scale and speed of change hasdiffered between the two countries. One ma-jor factor that has facilitated the faster trans-formation of nature and landscape con-servation policies in the CR has been thespecial symbolic role that environmental is-sues played in maintaining an otherwise at-omized civil society in the late 1980s (Tickleand Vavrousek, 1998). As a consequence theenvironment was a strong focus of new policyand legislative forcing in the early 1990s, witha radical new law on nature and landscapeconservation being enacted in 1992. Incontrast, the pressure for policy change in


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Slovenia has been relatively constant since the1980s.

Environmental activism in Slovenia cannotbe interpreted as a surrogate for political op-position. Rather, political opposition was al-ways relatively openly expressed, though itoften took on a nationalist/defederationalist ora counter-cultural form. As a consequence, thepace of legislative and administrative changehas been much slower. Many of the samepre-1990 key government officials and theiradvisors remain in post and much of theprevious legislation (including the 1981 Na-ture Conservation Act) was, until recently,still in force. However much legislation is stillwholly unsuited to the new conditions, espe-cially the relatively rapid introduction of anincreasingly marketized economy. At thesame time, recent proposals for an expansionof the protected area network (to between 20and 30% of the entire land surface) representmajor and ambitious shifts in environmentalpolicy, prompted by specific problems inrural governance related to forthcoming EUaccession.

New regulatory structures

The new conditions obtaining in both coun-tries have given rise to a number of ongoingtensions, seen on a variety of scales. The firstissue concerns new governmental structuresof regulation. In Slovenia, in a clear reversalof the status quo ante, administrative functionsrelating to planning and protected areas havebeen transferred from communes (obcina) tocentral government. The re-organization ofministerial and agency responsibilities forland use planning, nature conservation andwider environmental management has causeda good deal of uncertainty in regard to theallocation or responsibilities, in particular thesplit between local and central authorities.Tensions between the state, regions and local-ities have also been strong with regard toplanned increases in the amount of protectedareas under formal designation. In part, thesetensions relate to the likely constriction ofopportunities for economic development andhave been echoed in past controversies, suchas the quadrupling of the Triglav National

Park area in 1981, which was opposed (unsuc-cessfully) by tourist and hydro-electric powerenterprises.

Such opposition to the creation or extensionof protected areas has changed considerablysince independence however. The factors re-sponsible for this change in attitude appear toinclude declining economic opportunities inthe countryside, which has fostered a morepositive view of ecotourism opportunities, ashift in power between the hunting and con-servation lobbies (towards the latter) and theperception that further designation of pro-tected areas is a necessary part of the conver-gence process with the EU. Associated withthis last point is a major implicit rationale forexpansion of the protected area system inSlovenia as a mechanism for exclusion of suchareas from the feared consequences of a freemarket in land, which would lead to heavypurchases by foreign nationals. This is partic-ularly the case in the Trieste region and inIstria, much of which was Italian territorywithin living memory, where demands forrestitution by Italian nationals have alreadybeen made and where demand for holidayhomes by foreigners from the north as well asthe west is also likely to be strong.

In the CR, institutional (policy) structureshave remained relatively unchanged exceptfor the transfer of powers over nature andlandscape from the Ministry of Culture to thenew Ministry of the Environment and a re-organization of research and advice in a newstate agency for nature and landscape conser-vation. The major change seen in the CR hasbeen the assumption of full planning powersby the large-scale protected areas, namely thenational parks and the protected landscapeareas (PLAs). Formally these powers are notnew; however, in the socialist system, theywere entirely abrogated by the district andregional ‘national committees’, which werecompletely controlled by the communistparty. Now, in some respects, the centralismof the socialist past remains, albeit with amuch greener flavour: policy decisions relat-ing to protected areas, overseen by the CzechMinistry of the Environment, are still taken inPrague rather than in the regions. Processesfor local consultation and accountability are


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either absent or underused and appear to belargely at the discretion of the national parkor PLA administration. This has tended toexacerbate tensions relating to developmentcontrol issues, compounded by new forms ofownership.

Land ownership and rural governance

Unsurprisingly, combining new forms andpatterns of ownership with effective designa-tion and protection is one of the major issuesfacing both Slovenia and the CR. This is seenmost acutely in the CR, where most privatelandholdings were nationalized in the 1940s.Since 1990 much of this land has been resti-tuted to former owners or to communes, witha substantial rump of land remaining in in-terim ‘land funds’ administered by the state.Many of the major protected landscapes in theCR fall into this latter category, mainly byvirtue of their historical position in the Sudetyborderlands, which were ethnically German.This land came into state ownership when theSudeten Germans were forcibly expelled afterthe second world war. It is unlikely to berestituted to the former owners or their de-scendants in the current political climate.

Generally this has positive benefits for na-ture conservation; many of the areas weremilitary zones – forming part of the ‘ironcurtain’ – and have not been subject to devel-opment. As cultural landscapes, however,they have deteriorated due to the loss of tra-ditional management practices (mainly inagriculture and forestry). The first (post-1946)generation inhabitants of such areas (e.g. theSumava National Park or the BroumovskoPLA) often lack any cultural link or rapportwith the land and this is clearly problematicin terms of both managing and valuing thelandscape. A comparable situation is seen inthe Kras region of Slovenia, on the Slovene–Italian border. Here, rural depopulation andthe decline of traditional farming practiceshave raised major questions about the waythat the valued cultural landscapes may bemaintained. These have yet to be addressedby any significant agri-environmental mea-sures that are likely to be contingent on theformat of the Common Agricultural Policy

(CAP) at the time of accession; however des-ignation is seen as an important preliminaryto whatever policies are in due courseadopted.

Land that has passed into private or com-munal ownership also presents conservationchallenges. Interview evidence in both coun-tries suggests that, in general, new owners arenot sympathetic to environmental concernsand are more likely to view land as a sourceof strict economic benefit, ripe for new devel-opment. In Czech protected areas the expecta-tion and concern is that this is likely to takethe form of new or extended dwellings,linked to tourism enterprises. Such en-trepreneurial activity, very much encouragedby the dominant centre-right government ofthe mid-1990s, sits uneasily with the strictdevelopment control zones within nationalparks and PLAs. Not surprisingly, this hasfostered a political backlash that wishes to seeplanning powers stripped away from the parkand PLA administrations through amendmentof the 1992 Nature and Landscape Conserva-tion Act. Currently this has been resisted bythe Ministry of the Environment and the na-tional parliament though EU harmonizationand forthcoming regional devolution may en-hance the pressure for change.

In Slovenia, by contrast, large-scale privateownership of land largely continued undersocialism and the landscape in many areasthus still retains its traditional character, dom-inated by small individual land holdings. Inthis sense, policies of restitution and priva-tization will have little serious effect althoughthe concentration of landed capital in privatehands has increased overall. The largest ques-tions exist over former state and church lands.Much of the former is held in an agriculturaland forest land fund and there exist concernsthat in the wider landscape (outside protectedareas) privatization of forest land may lead toneglect. Fears have also been voiced by con-servationists that reparation and/or privatiza-tion of church lands may also impose furtherobstacles to the effective protection of landwithin protected areas. A further concern,highlighted earlier, is the likely penetration offoreign land ownership consequent on EUaccession. However development pressures


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have been reduced by the recognized continu-ity between pre- and post- independence ad-ministrative structures. These are char-acterized by a relatively strong developmentcontrol system, implemented at a local levelby effective three-way checks between theMinistry of Physical Planning, the regionalinstitutes (now separated between natural andcultural heritage protection) and the localauthorities.

Stakeholders, participation and civil society

Inherent in a discussion of the intersectionbetween land ownership issues and natureand landscape conservation is a public–private debate that is not confined to centraland eastern Europe and is a major undercur-rent of the themes discussed above. It is thecase that most conservationists in both the‘east’ and ‘west’ tend to favour statist formsof protection, either through national orsupranational frameworks of regulation (codi-fied in laws), or by ownership, or commonlyby combinations thereof. In the former social-ist countries, whereas this was a theoretical‘given’ under previous forms of ‘social owner-ship’, the private–public divide is now farmore acutely contested, as society and thestate face the challenge of new forms of inter-relationships that lie loosely within the arenanow termed ‘civil society’.

Given the partial atomization of civil soci-ety under autocratic forms of socialist rule, itis unsurprising that substantial tensions nowexist between forms of regulation promul-gated by post-socialist governments and indi-viduals and organizations keen to developnew-found autonomies unconstrained by thestate. In relation to protected areas and cur-rent notions of sustainable development, thisengenders questions of how the relationshipbetween the state and local people is changingand how such changes may be steered. Oldparadigms of state stewardship appear cur-rently to be preferred on the grounds of na-tional and international interest because of (i)the perceived ineffectiveness or unreliabilityof new regulatory mechanisms, (ii) uncertain-ties contingent on the approximation processand (iii) nature and landscape conservation

‘expertise’ not being locally based. In additionit is recognized that protected areas need hu-man-based, economically sustaining forms ofactivities to maintain the form of habitats andcultural landscapes inherent in the originaldesignation of the area but that they are oftenin economically deprived regions where suchinputs may be difficult to sustain.

This suggests that a key issue for the futuremust be to find ways of widening local partic-ipation and consultation which advance cur-rent notions of environmental responsibilityand the role of the citizen within emerging,post-socialist civil societies (see Tickle andWelsh, 1998). Indeed, the development andstability of formalized nodes within civil soci-ety, such as citizen movements, interestgroups, trade unions etc, is seen by many –including supra-national agencies such as theEU, Council of Europe, OSCE and foreign aidfoundations – as a pre-requisite to an in-formed and functioning liberal democracy.

THE IMPACT OF EU ENLARGEMENT

In early 1998 Slovenia and the CR, togetherwith eight other aspirant countries (mostlyfrom former eastern Europe), were invited tobegin negotiations for entry to the EuropeanUnion. It is by no means clear that accessionwill occur en bloc ; the CR is currently target-ing 2003 for entry (though on current progressthis is seen by many as overly optimistic). InSlovenia by contrast it is accepted that entry isunlikely to take place before 2006. Entry de-pends on satisfying three overall criteria es-poused in the European Commission’sframework document Agenda 2000. Two ofthese relate to the aspirant member’s state ofreadiness and include

� the existence of a functioning and stabledemocracy and market economy and re-spect for human rights and

� the adoption of all EU legal frameworksand directives (the acquis communautaire).

The third criterion, which is essentially po-litical in character, is that


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� the EU must be satisfied of its own capac-ity to undertake enlargement.

The main focus of the accession negotia-tions is on the ability of the aspirant countriesto meet the acquis. This is carried out princi-pally by a detailed screening process of theconcordance or otherwise of national and EUlaws. Where disparities exist, amendments toor wholesale transpositions of EU legislationonto the national statutes are expected to bemade. From the beginning of the negotiations,the EU has signalled its concerns over theability of the former socialist states to meetthe environmental chapter of the acquis. Thisis generally acknowledged to be problematic,given the large and complex body of EUenvironmental law and the poor environmen-tal legacy inherited from the socialist period.However, this criticism is less easily appliedto nature and landscape conservation policy,where a large majority of national legislationis compliant with EU frameworks and noformal transition periods have yet beensought (MZP CR, 1999).

In the CR, recent estimates suggest thatmost nature and landscape legislation willconcordant with current EU law shortly (MZPCR, 2000) and in some areas the current law ismore stringent. In Slovenia, a new NatureConservation Act was finally adopted in mid-1999. The need to secure harmonization withthe EU and at the same time to accommodatespecific national circumstances (and interests)has been a major reason for the delay. In bothcountries areas of environmental legislationand regulation other than protected areas arefar more problematic. In 1999 the Czech gov-ernment proposed to ask the EU for so-called‘opt-outs’ or ‘transitional periods’ (before fullcompliance) in seven sub-topics in the envi-ronment chapter (Shafir, 1999). In both coun-tries, water quality has been a particular areaof concern.

A further accession issue more closely re-lated to protected area policy is that of foreignownership of land. In Slovenia (and in theformer SFRJ) this was prohibited by law ex-cept in certain cases of inheritance. However arequirement of EU harmonization is the de-velopment of a free market in land and the

Slovene constitution has now been amendedto this end, with provisions excluding spe-cially designated areas. As was detailed ear-lier, this is now one factor in the proposedincrease of protected areas in Slovenia. How-ever it should be noted that ‘opt-outs’ (eithertemporary, through transitional periods, orpermanent) on the landownership issue haveeither been obtained by recent new memberstates (e.g. Denmark) or have been called forby applicant countries, including the CR.

Wider reservations have also been ex-pressed by the EU about the institutional ca-pacity of the aspirant countries and theseappear to be borne out by the slow progressof the preliminary negotiations. Previousstudies of the EU’s relationship with east Eu-ropean states suggest that a strong degree ofpower asymmetry exists in favour of the EU(Baker, 1995; Caddy, 1997). This is still a no-ticeable feature of the current negotiationswhere aspirant countries are expected to meetenvironmental and other standards not cur-rently enforced in existing member states. De-spite such anomalies most aspirant countriesand the EU continue to have a high degree ofcommitment to enlargement, suggesting ashared perception of a ‘win–win’ scenario.

WIDER ISSUES IN THE EUROPEANENVIRONMENT

Previous studies have suggested that the in-terest of the EU in the environment of easternEurope is not wholly altruistic (Baker, 1995;Gowan, 1995) and is based more on the real-politik of enhanced power and economic pro-gress within a global ‘new world order’.Leaving this aside, there are undoubtedlybenefits that could be realized by a unifiedEuropean approach to environmental issues,particularly in relation to nature and land-scape conservation. Nonetheless, it should beclearly realized that there are serious contra-dictions still inherent in the economic devel-opment trajectory of the EU that are notresolved by its policies aimed towardssustainability.


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It has long been the view of European con-servationists that protected areas and desig-nated sites should form the core of policiesaimed at stemming the decline in natural cap-ital apparent in most countries. Ecological the-ory shows, moreover, that such areas shouldbe of a sufficient size and contiguity to allowfor the maintenance of key species, popula-tions and habitats. Policy efforts in recentdecades have focused on the concept of linkedEuropean networks of protected areas as themost effective method of securing wildlifeand landscape diversity. From this perspec-tive, the consolidation and development ofthe already well established protected areasystems of eastern Europe represents a signifi-cant step, particularly because the regioncontains many biodiversity ‘hotspots’ plusvaluable species, habitats and cultural land-scapes no longer common in western Europe.The region also is a significant repository ofaccumulated knowledge and expertise in pro-tected area management, signified in part bythe formation of the pre-accession ‘EmeraldNetwork’ of significant protected areas andtheir staff.

Becoming part of an enlarged EU is likelyto bring benefits for the aspirant members,including the earlier adoption of more strin-gent environmental legislation than mightotherwise have been countenanced by na-tional governments (although this will be farfrom cost free). In addition, and dependent onfurther CAP reform, significant agri-environ-mental funds may be released, improving theeconomic (and hence landscape) stability ofcurrently marginal protected areas. Further-more if agricultural subsidies were to becomestrictly cross-compliant on meeting environ-mental criteria, the less intensively farmedareas of eastern Europe may attract relativelyhigh levels of subsidy. Conversely EU fund-ing packages, such as the CAP and the Struc-tural Funds, have also been extensivelycriticized for their negative environmental im-pacts, particularly in relation to infrastructural‘improvement’ projects in the field of energyand transport. Continuing developments inthese areas, for example the Trans-EuropeanNetworks (TENs) of transport communica-tion, have the potential to adversely affect

valuable protected areas – particularly in pre-viously remote cross-border areas.

In this sense the vision for the new milleniumin terms of European nature and landscapeconservation policy is still occluded by thesame meta-conflict: economic progress versusresource conservation. The continuing ten-sions between these issues have characterizedEU environmental policy since its inception ina structurally similar manner to the way inwhich industrial progress versus environmen-tal protection paradigms clashed within ‘actu-ally existing’ socialism (Weiner, 2000).However, the past decades have seen signifi-cant movement in Europe (east and west) inestablishing much clearer rationales and bind-ing frameworks for progressing sustainabilityissues (most significantly at supra-nationallevels). The most significant challenge for thenew millenium is to integrate such policiesinto the wider political and social arena bypursuing wider forms of stakeholder partici-pation at the expense of elite or expert-ledforms of regulation. In moving towards sucha vision of effective nature and landscapeconservation policy, it seems more likely thatgovernance approaches – typified by more or-ganic institutional arrangements than govern-ment, and involving a fuller range of policyactors – offer inherently better opportunitiesfor realizing the variety of goals subsumedwithin the project of European ruralsustainability.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial supportof the Research Committees of Birkbeck College and itsFaculty of Continuing Education for parts of the workundertaken as part of the Centre for European ProtectedArea Research (CEPAR) project ‘Protected areas andpolitical transition in central and south-eastern Europe’.We also wish to thank the many questionnaire respon-dents and interviewees in both the CR and Slovenia fortheir valuable time and effort spent giving insights intothe issues explored in the project. We also thank MojcaKrisper and Pavla Alchin for bilingual research assis-tance and translations. The usual disclaimers apply.


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Nature and landscape conservation in transition in central and south-eastern Europe