Did Forestland Restitution Facilitate Institutional Amnesia? Some Evidence from Romanian Forest Policy

Marian Drăgoi and Veronica Toza
Additional contact information
Marian Drăgoi: University Stefan cel Mare of Suceava, Faculty of Forestry, 720229 Suceava, Romania
Veronica Toza: Green Advisers Ltd., 030018 Bucuresti, Romania

Land, 2019, vol. 8, issue 6, 1-19

Abstract: This paper shows how the slow process of forestland restitution, which is unfolding in Romania since 1991 has eroded the threads of sustainable forest management by an insidious institutional amnesia (IA). The four symptoms of this harmful process (frequent reorganization, transition from paperwork to electronic media, fewer people motivated to join public services, and popularity of radical changes) were analyzed from the legal standing point as well as from practitioners’ perspective. After having described the legal process and the relative dependencies between laws and government ordinances we also showed that the three laws on forestland restoration (three fully operational laws and two bills submitted in 2019, one year before general elections) were produced by unintended policy arrangements. The legal loopholes of forestland restitution were described in details as well as the challenges brought about by nature conservation policy (Natura 2000 management plans v traditional forest planning), and the overwhelming bureaucratic burden developed to deter illegal logging, instead of fully implementing a modern system of forest watching based on volunteering. However, the main cause of IA is institutional unsteadiness which was inherited from the communist regime, and cannot be alleviated unless more involvement of professional foresters in politics.

Keywords: land restitution; Romanian legal system; forest policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/6/99/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/6/99/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:8:y:2019:i:6:p:99-:d:241103

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().