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Linking sustainable practices throughout Europe

[EXP] Supporting the associations of Private Forest Owners in South East Europe

Promoting cooperation and building capacities between organisations of 8 countries

Rural topic(s): Sustainable forestry

Type: Success story

Date of writing: December 14, 2016

Author(s) of this page: Anela Stavrevska-Panajotova

Organization(s): CNVP (Connecting Natural Values and People Foundation), REFORD (Regional Centre for Forestry and Rural Development)

Summary:

The project aims to increase capacities of REFORD- Regional Centre for Forestry and Rural Development refordcentre.org/. REFORD is a networking organisation representing the interest of Associations of Private Forest Owners (APFO) from Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Republika Srbska, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and communal forest federation from Albania. This project is promoting cooperation with and within this already existing network of eight APFO’s from the SEE and ensuring sharing of experiences and joint learning through the network.

Text:

Background and activities

CNVP - Connecting Natural Values and People Foundation - is a non-profit organisation, with its headquarter in The Hague, Netherlands. Our programmes cover Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro with good experience of joint business development with local partners and connected in the wider region.

The forestry support programmes provided also the opportunity for a more regional focus with a cross border project between the association for private and communal forestry. Through their regular communication, intensive sharing, learning and experiences exchange on the forestry reform processes, the regional linkages between the associations became very strong. In 2010 this Balkan network felt the need of following their good collaboration and decided to register the regional Centre for Forestry and Rural Development.

Activities: Support within the project is provided through activities foreseen in three result areas and outcomes:

1)A sustainable network of family forestry is functioning in the region;

2)Improved service delivery to family forest owners;

3)Improved learning and sharing of best practices of SFM and rural development in family forestry among the network organizations from the region.

Outlook

Challenges:

  • Increasing capacities of REFORD network to be able to address family forestry issues from the SEE in Europe.

  • Supporting initiative groups in countries where there is a potential interest of forest owners to create their representation structures like in Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Notes:

Information gathered at: the 2nd workshop on Sustainable Forest Management (10-13 November 2016)

Contact:

CNVPC Connecting Natural Values and People Foundation

Contact: Anela Stavrevska-Panajotova

E-mail: anela.stavrevska(a)cnvp-eu.org

Website: www.cnvp-eu.org/

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Informations:

Scale of intervention : European

Keywords: forest ownership, family farming, woodland management, integrated rural development, rural entrepreneurship

Places: Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe

Actors: NGO, private sector, forest owner

Methods: networking, experience exchange, promotion of local economic activity, cross-border cooperation