A New Life for Forest Resources: The Commons as a Driver for Economic Sustainable Development—A Case Study from Galicia

Abstract

Communal forests are a unique land tenure system and comprise a singular legal category in Galicia. Their persistence over time demonstrates that this community-owned resource has overcome the “tragedy of the commons”, showing their capability to successfully develop self-governing institutions. However, communal forests have rarely been studied through the lens of economics. This minimizes the opportunity to explore to what extent communities of communal forests might be a driving force of general well-being, citizen empowerment, equity, employment, and local development. In this paper, we focus on this gap and address the opportunities. We detail this special ownership structure that allows residents of rural areas to exploit the forest as if they were a single owner. Moreover, we highlight the potential of communal forests to exploit local resources far beyond extractive processes, enabling the generation of greater added value to the economy while favoring a responsible treatment of resources. This enables productive activity integrated with the rest of the primary sector, while allowing for the maintenance of the population and supporting the local economy. Our results reveal a set of inefficiencies that can jeopardize common forest opportunities to become a sustainable economic activity, such as underqualified management, a low level of interest and commitment among community members, and excessive focus on logging. Thus, we propose several actions to improve collective engagement and active membership to better manage Galicia’s forests.

The Compossessorates in the Olt Land (Romania) as Sustainable Commons

“…The solutions to improve the functioning of the Romanian commons identified while conducting the thematic analysis of specialized literature are presented in the Section 2 of the article. Some of the solutions, such as employment opportunities for young people in rural areas, improved communication strategies, establishing common goals for the locals, and establishing associations of several commons resemble those proposed by Bastida [5] for Galicia. They also reflect some similar local features such as the aging rural population and the migration of the workforce.…”

“…The concept of property employed by the Romanian legislators in relation with the lands of the commons is a protectionist and collectivist-nationalist one [76]. As such, it keeps the land outside the estate market, protecting it from the interests of international logging companies [5]. The inalienability of property is a particular feature of Romanian legislation in the field, which thus opposes the neo-liberal individualistic tendencies manifest at European level [5,18].…”

“…As such, it keeps the land outside the estate market, protecting it from the interests of international logging companies [5]. The inalienability of property is a particular feature of Romanian legislation in the field, which thus opposes the neo-liberal individualistic tendencies manifest at European level [5,18].…”

“…When overlaying the perspective above on practices such as forest leasing and resorting to commons as tools of social entrepreneurship, all of which are solutions suggested to manage the commons forests in Galicia [5], it becomes obvious that the latter do not match very well in the case of the compossessorates from Făgărăs , area.…”

“…The first commons were concerned with the management of land, but in the history of Europe there were also commons concerned with forests, fisheries, water, and food [2]. As a form of organization employed for the management of forests and pastures, the commons are employed in several European countries: Great Britain, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey [3], Sweden [3,4], Scotland, Slovenia, Italy [4], and Spain (Galicia) [5].…”