Are the Communal Forest Owners Involved in the Management of Their Lands? a Qualitative Analysis for the Case of Galicia (Spain)
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BOSQUE 35(2): 207-215, 2014 DOI: 10.4067/S0717-92002014000200008 Are the communal forest owners involved in the management of their lands? A qualitative analysis for the case of Galicia (Spain) ¿Los propietarios de bosques comunales están involucrados en la gestión de sus tierras? Un análisis cualitativo para el caso de Galicia (España) Manuel Francisco Marey-Pérez a*, Alexia Calvo-González a, Gloria Domínguez-Torres b *Corresponding author: a Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Instituto Universitario de Estudios y Desarrollo de Galicia (IDEGA), Departamento de Ingeniería Agroforestal, Campus Universitario, s/n, 27002, Lugo, España, tel.: + 34 982823248, ext. 23248 / 23247, fax: +34 982 285 926, [email protected] b Centro Tecnológico Forestal de Cataluña (CTFC), Lérida, España. SUMMARY Society’s participation in decisions regarding land planning and management is essential to reach viable and long-lasting solutions in forest management. We analyzed the participation of communal land owners to better understand their attitudes towards the management of this property. Glaser and Strauss’ Grounded Theory (1967) was used to build knowledge on the management of the property that starts in this study through the interpretation of data from personal interviews conducted in a participation process. We chose a sample of neighboring communities to conduct interviews according to the interest shown in the public participation process of a Forest Plan in a mountain area in the Autonomous Community of Galicia in northwest Spain. The communities were classified into i) very active, ii) active and iii) passive, according to their management level and geographical representation. We discovered the most active communities have more dynamic management due to their multifunctional perspective of communal forests. Regarding passive communities, their lack of interest in management is largely to recognizing a conflicted identity of the property due to physical and administrative problems. Key words: forest planning, grounded theory, neighborhood, public participation. RESUMEN La participación de la sociedad en las decisiones relativas a la planificación y gestión de la tierra es esencial para alcanzar soluciones viables y duraderas en el manejo forestal. Se analizó la participación de los propietarios de las tierras comunales para comprender mejor sus actitudes hacia la gestión de esta propiedad. Se utilizó la Grounded Theory, de Glaser y Strauss, para construir el conocimiento sobre la gestión de la propiedad que se inicia en este estudio a través de la interpretación de los datos de entrevistas personales llevadas a cabo en un proceso de participación. Elegimos una muestra de comunidades vecinales para realizar entrevistas de acuerdo con el interés mostrado en el proceso de participación pública del Plan Forestal en una zona de montaña en la Comunidad Autónoma de Galicia en el noroeste de España. Las comunidades fueron clasificadas en i) muy activa, ii) activa y iii) pasiva, de acuerdo a su nivel de gestión y representación geográfica. Descubrimos que las comunidades más activas tienen una gestión más dinámica debido a su perspectiva multifuncional de los montes comunales. Y con respecto a las comunidades pasivas, su falta de interés en la gestión se debe principalmente al reconocimiento de una identidad conflictiva de la propiedad debido a problemas de origen físico y administrativo. Palabras clave: planificación forestal, teoría fundamentada, comunidades vecinales, participación pública. INTRODUCTION quez et al. (2009). According to Jönsson and Gustavsson (2002), it is important to consider strategic planning mea- Social changes in the last decades have marked a tran- sures that provide new approaches to respond to these new sition point in the concept of forest management. The social attitudes and motivations in forest management. changes in the structure and aim of forest property have The need to understand the perspectives and interests not only influenced the maximization of forest exploitation of forest owners determines the use of information about (Pattanayak et al. 2002), but also the attitude and motiva- the goal of the different stakeholders in the forestry sector. tion of its owners (Karppinen 2005). Lehtinen (1994) deals From 1980s onwards in Europe, studies have been incre- with the new demands of society on forest land such as asingly focused on the behavior and motivations of forest those related to the enjoyment of the natural environment, owners (Bliss and Martin 1989, Butler et al. 2007), though which are very different from the pre-existing ones linked in Spain, the first studies of forest owners date from the to agriculture and stockbreeding, as stated by Gómez Váz- last decade (Marey-Pérez et al. 2006, Rodríguez-Vicente 207 BOSQUE 35(2): 207-215, 2014 Public participation in communal land and Marey-Pérez 2008, 2009, 2010, Domínguez and Shan- boa et al. 2006, Marey-Pérez et al. 2006, Gómez Vázquez non 2009, Marey-Pérez et al. 2009). et al. 2009). This land-tenancy scheme is a type of private Due to what has been exposed above, political systems collective property that belongs to groups of neighbors: have the power to ensure citizen participation in environ- “comuneros”. They have several characteristics of rural mental decisions. According to Kouplevatskaya-Yunusova society (Elands et al. 2004) since they are both owners and Buttoud (2006) and Dhubháin et al. (2009), the me- and managers of economic and productive units, and resi- chanisms of public participation in decision making in the dents of the areas where communal lands are located. The forest sector must be put into practice incorporating them land is managed in a participative and associative manner. into ground planning and as an instrument that may help to This type of property has a huge potential for forest ex- improve the forest sustainable management as indicated by ploitation since its average size is 230 ha, far bigger than Pan-European Sustainable Forest Management (PEFC) Cri- the average individual privately-owned parcel (1.5 - 2 ha teria and Indicators (Stupak et al. 2010). Thus, the effort that per owner) (Rodríguez-Vicente and Marey-Pérez 2008). those in charge of forest management must make should be The process of public participation took place in the translated into the elaboration of Forest Plans (Domínguez making of a Forest Plan in the District VII, A Fonsagrada- et al. 2005) where the need for valuable information for such Os Ancares in the east of Lugo province (figure 1). development will be satisfied by participatory processes. The different approaches used for the study of this type of Material and methods. The process started with an infor- information have been predominantly hypothetical-deducti- mational phase about the right of participation of all those ve. The design of this study is constructivist and inductive, interested in the area. After all participants registered, di- given the advantages derived from a qualitative methodolo- fferent working groups were formed with representation gy (Domínguez and Shannon 2009, Mutshewa 2010). depending on the degree of relationship with the forest In this context, the aim of this paper is to improve the (e.g., owners, hunters, business, Forest Administration) level of knowledge of the management that the collective and geographical area. Later, a discussion process started forest owners realize upon having qualitatively evaluated regarding the opinion gathered from questionnaires and their opinions in a process of public participation for the personal interviews related to PEFC Criteria and Indica- development of a forest plan of their grounds. The purpose tors. Finally, the presentation of results and amendments is to be able to help in the making of strategic decisions of was made public to later present a final document appro- performance of these properties to improve their sustaina- ved by all those involved (Marey-Pérez et al. 2009). ble use in the future. We applied Grounded Theory (GT) The research and analysis method was qualitative and to explore and analyze the opinions and attitudes of this inductive, inserted in a process of public participation. group towards the management of their lands. GT was cho- Using Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), data sen as an empirical and qualitative method to study social patterns that occurred at the beginning of the data-gathe- life and is used for data collection and analyses (Glaser and ring process were observed. These data were later contras- Strauss 1967, Charmaz 2006). This methodology builds an ted with additional data until a saturation point was rea- increasingly more complex representation of the social ched (Strauss and Corbin 1990). Due to the nature of the phenomena studied and interpreted (Domínguez and Shan- methodology, according to Charmaz (2006), the sampling non 2009); having, thus, a constructivist character. Ideas strategy is theoretically based, where the researcher deals arise from data interpretation without previous hypotheses with people, information and events. These enable the re- (Creswell 1998), in contrast with hypothetic-deductive searcher to clarify and define the limits and the appropria- methods in which trial data are collected to test predeter- teness of the theoretical concepts that are derived from data mined hypotheses (Domínguez and Shannon 2009). interpretation without deviating from the focus of analysis. We chose a representative sample of private owners to METHODS be interviewed