Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 94, May 2020, 104522
Land Use Policy

Extension, advice and knowledge systems for private forestry: Understanding diversity and change across Europe

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104522Get rights and content

Highlights

  • FOrestry Knowledge and Information Systems (FOKIS) in Europe are changing as ownership and policy change.

  • Patterns of persuasive or coercive communication vary with geography and politics.

  • Policy demands from forests are broadening from timber to wider ecosystem services.

  • FOKIS are becoming more democratic, participatory and negotiated.

  • Advisory services are moving from public to private sector.

Abstract

The decisions and actions of private forest owners are important for the delivery of forest goods and services. Both forest ownership, and policies related to forest owners, are changing. Traditionally in most countries, government extension officers have advised and instructed forest owners, but this is evolving, with greater importance given to a range of actors, objectives, and knowledge types. Drawing on literature and mixed data from 10 countries in Europe, this paper explores how forestry advisory systems can be conceptualized, and describes their current situation in Europe. Drawing parallels with the concept of AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems), we propose the term FOKIS (FOrestry Knowledge and Information Systems), as both a system (a purposeful and interdependent group of bodies) and a method for understanding such systems. We define four dimensions for describing FOKIS: owners, policy goals, advice providers, and tools. We find different roles for extension in countries with centrally controlled, highly regulated forest management, and advisors in regions where forest owners have more freedom to choose how to manage their forest. We find five trends across Europe: increasing flexibility, openness and participation of owners as sources of information; increasing reliance on information and persuasion rather than enforced compliance; a shift of attention from timber to a wider range of ecosystem services such as biodiversity and recreation; a shift of funding and providers from public to private sector; emergence of new virtual communication tools. The approach provides a way to make sense of comparisons and change in FOKIS, and opens up an important research field.

Section snippets

Rethinking forestry extension as a system

Society has high expectations of forests to deliver a wide range of ecosystems services, in the context of sustainable forest management and the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015), and policy has to balance the expectations of different stakeholder groups. In Europe, where more than 53 % of the forest area is owned by private owners, of which in turn at least 65 % is owned by individuals and families (FAO, 2015; UNECE, 2020), forest management outcomes depend on the decisions

COST Actions as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research

This work was facilitated by a COST Action project, FACESMAP (Forest Land Ownership Changes in Europe: Significance for Management and Policy). COST Actions are networks dedicated to scientific collaboration, funded by the European Union, explicitly designed to complement national funding sources. The funding covers networking tools, such as meetings, conferences, workshops, short-term scientific missions, training schools, publications and dissemination activities. Participants’ travel and

Results

Information about these four dimensions of the FOKIS are summarised for ten countries in Europe in Supplementary Table 1. In the following sections we describe the main findings for each dimension. We then summarise with an overview of geographical variations, and of key trends over recent decades. A central interest of the AKIS / FOKIS approach is innovation, and we conclude the results section with an example of innovation in each country, as a pointer to further lines of research. Fig. 1

Consistent trends in FOKIS

Despite the diversity of historical, social, economic and political contexts, analysis of the FOKIS in these ten European countries reveals a consistent move away from traditional extension based on technology transfer. A more diverse range of services and providers is emerging, in parallel with the pluralistic approach in agricultural advisory services (Birner et al., 2009; Faure et al., 2012). This move is characterised by five trends typical of the majority of our ten countries:

  • 1

    FOKIS have

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Anna Lawrence: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Philippe Deuffic: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Teppo Hujala: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Liviu Nichiforel: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. Diana

Acknowledgements

The work on this article was supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) through COST Action FP1201 - Forest Land Ownership Changes in Europe: Significance for Management and Policy (FACESMAP)CGA-FP1201-3B. We thank two anonymous referees for their careful reading and helpful suggestions.

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