Governance of the forest restitution process in Romania: An application of the DPSIR model

Over the last 25years, the post-communist countries have encompassed important changes in ownership because of the transition from a centralised regime to an open market economy. Following the implementation of three different land restitution laws, almost 51% of the Romanian forestlands are currently in non-state ownership. The paper uses the DPSIR (Driving Forces-Pressures-State-Impacts-Responses) framework to analyse the forest restitution governance process and its impact on resource management outcomes. We have analysed the social and political environment of the forest restitution (Driving forces), the current and the past structure of the private forests (State), the ecological, economic and social effects of restitution (Impacts) and the institutional tools used in private forests (Responses). Data collection techniques combined the scrutiny of literature on forest privatisation with a case study analysis based on remote sensing, field work inventory and questionnaires. The study analyses the situation of small scale forest tenures (less than 1ha) given back to the former owners per the first law of land restitution (Law 18/1991). The results show that the forest restitution has been used as a trade-off between politicians' interest in winning political capital and owner's interest in getting short-term benefits from the forest. Despite the highly regulatory setting aiming to preserve the traditional rules of forest management, anthropic disturbances have affected on a large scale the private managed forests, while the policy responses were not able to encompass the new challenges brought by the changing ownership structure. The analysis concludes that the current policy responses are strengthening even more the regulatory framework but as reaction to a new policy goal: to limit the law infringements and the corruption created by the failure of enforcing the command and control instruments.