Albania SHKPKK

							1. INTRODUCTION
    Bounded on the west by the Adriatic Sea and sandwiched between former Yugoslavia
to the north and Greece to the south, Albania is a mainly hilly and mountainous country,
with a beautiful but rugged terrain. The GDP per capita is US$ 1,196. More than 60% of
Albania’s rural households own less than 0.8 ha of land. Out of this number, three quarters
of the households living in mountainous areas have less than 0.5 ha at hand. Only 16% of
the total land area lies below 100 m, 55% falls between 100 and 1,000 m and 29% is above
1,000 m. As such, the land used for agriculture is often sloping, with only ca. 44% of the
agricultural land having a slope of less than 5%. In many parts of the country, climatic and
soil conditions are favorable for forest and pasture growth.
    The majority of land resources consist in areas covered by forest and pastures (ca. 52%
or 1.5 million ha). Traditionally in the Mediterranean region, forests have provided a large
variety of other products, with revenues sometimes exceeding the value of wood
(Scarascia-Mugnozza et al., 2000). Albanian forests are the primary source of wood and of
the many of non-timber forest products that include medicinal and aromatic plants, food and
beverages, fodder, perfumes, cosmetics, fiber, gums, resins, and ornamentals and materials for
dyeing and tanning, plant protection, utensils and handicrafts. Historically, forests in
Albania were spared the devastation that occurred in other Mediterranean countries. In the
1930’s industrial harvesting began on an unsustainable level (Bosworth, 1975) and has
continued since then. In contrast to arable land, most of the forest and pasture land has always
been public. According to Ottoman law, all land was owned by the state. Communal
ownership occurred in areas that had certain autonomy from Ottoman rule. While arable land
later became private, forests remained state-owned and with open access. Forests belonging to
religious institutions were another form of communal ownership. This tenure system survived
after independence, up to the end of the World War II. The communists undertook agrarian
reform for propaganda purposes soon after coming to power in Albania. They confiscated
large land holdings and all forests and pastures owned by individuals, religious institutions,
and communities. About two-thirds of the total arable land was redistributed to landless
families. By 1948, most of the arable land had been divided into small plots. However, the real
aim of the regime was nothing less than the nationalization of the land. Immediately after the
agrarian reform, following the pattern of kolkhozes in the former Soviet Union, began the
forced collectivization of private land, a process that was completed by the end of 1967.
    In 1946 all the forest and pasture land became state-owned. This includes every form of
copse, wood or forest, from the dwarf oaks and pine woods that border villages, to the
dense forests on the high slopes of the mountain ranges. Under Communism, the State
Forestry Commission was responsible for every aspect of forestry: care of trees, disease
control, replanting, felling, transport and sale of timber and timber products. In every
district there were locals working for the forestry commission (Meta, 1992). The transition
of the country from a command to a market economy has accelerated the degradation of the
forest resource due to ambiguous property rights and lack of funding for management and
protection. Natural and human potential is not used efficiently because of inadequate
infrastructural, organizational, and financial structures and arrangements. In contrast to the
importance of forests, their contribution to the Albanian economy, based primarily on
wood production, seems to be very low—only 6 percent of the total agricultural output in
1990 (World Bank 1996). The estimate does not include significant amounts of forest
products harvested individually or illegally and therefore not recorded. Furthermore,
marketable NTFPs such as medicinal and aromatic plants (currently an important export
item) are not included, since they are considered part of the food industry. By taking all
these into account, plus non-market values of the forest ecosystems, the importance of the
forests is considerably more than the above published value. This undervaluation of the
forest sector is one of the reasons for the neglect by politicians and bureaucrats.
    Forest and pasture types are diverse because of local weather patterns and ecological and
topographic conditions as well as millennia of anthropogenic influences. Despite differences
in vegetation, habitat types, and human usage, Albanian forests and pastures also have some
common features. Most of these ecosystems are particularly fragile, unstable, and
unsustainable because of the interaction of natural factors (steepness, summer droughts, and
torrential rains) and social forces (fire, grazing, and over-cutting). Considering specific climate
and vegetation criteria, naturalists have identified five phyto-climatic zones in Albania, which
range from the maquis in the coast to alpine grasslands at the elevations above 2000 m (Nako,
1969). Such an extent of the forest and pasture land demonstrates the enormous potential
that Albania has for the development of forestry (Naka et al., 2000).
    Only 25% of Albanias’ 28 750 km2 total area is arable land. A great deal of resources
were expended during the communist period to enlarge the stock of arable land by terracing
vast expanses of hills and by draining swamps in an effort to achieve a central goal of the
regime: enhancing Albania's economic self-sufficiency (Rugg, 1994; Lemel, 1998).
Following the break with the Soviet Union in 1961, the decision was made to increase
agricultural production and to reduce the emphasis on investment in industry. Extension of
arable land, retention of the rural population and reduction of private plots were seen as the
keys to fulfilling this goal. Arable land doubled between 1950 and 1989 as a result of
massive terracing, marsh draining, irrigation works and desalination projects. At the same
time counteracting this increase, the government’s pro-natalist policy had tripled the
population. A favorite slogan in the 1960s was: “Let us take to the hills and mountains, and
make them as beautiful and fertile as the plains.” This was part of the regime’s twin
campaigns to promote regional equality and to extend the arable land area as much as
possible. By the 1980s land per head had actually dropped by 10 per cent, so that in 1989
only 0.2 ha of arable land was available for cultivation per capita (Sjoberg, 1989). As can
be depicted from Figure 1, forest resources of the country have paid so much in the last 5
decades, most of them being transformed in agricultural lands.


     Figure 1: Changes in population, forest and pastures during the last decades
Figure 1a. Distribution of human population in   Figure 1b. Development of Forest and Pastures
Albania according to the altitude.               areas and the human population in the period
                                                 1945-2005.

Population (%)




                    Altitude (m)


                            Source: Adopted from INSTAT 2001


    The disintegration of the state and collective farms during the collapse of the communist
regime (1991-1992) was dramatic (Hall, 1999). With the approval of the “Law on land”
(July 19th, 1991) the arable land (used by cooperatives and the state farms) was to be
distributed to former workers of the above-mentioned units. However, by 1991, with
cooperatives and state farms teetering on the brink of collapse, the authorities no longer had
the luxury of choosing whether to dissolve them, only how to do so. One of the most
fundamental initiatives meant to set the country on the path to a free market was the
privatization of real estate and its distribution to the country's citizens (Lemel, 1998).
    Land was to be assigned to families, with total area per family calculated based on the
number of family members resident in the village on August 1991. However, in northern
Albania the land was distributed on a per family, not per capita, basis and entirely in
reference to “old boundaries” (Lemel, 1998). This kind of privatization has led to an
excessive fragmentation. The number of farm holdings in Albania is about 420,000 with an
area averaging 1.5 ha split in 3.3 plots of varying quality. Although the privatization of the
land in Albania was completed physically and legally in 1992, there are still disputes and
uncertainties. A thread running throughout the story of Albania's rural land privatization
experience has been the failure of government authorities to enforce the law. Ownership-
related problems generally had in one way or another to do with insistence that pre-
collectivization ownership rights be restored. Such demands could lead to conflicts
between villagers, between entire villages and the state, and to a refusal to sign the deed
unless such rights were recognized
    Under such circumstances, Albanian farmers try to obtain those natural resources that
bear a relatively low cost (not to say without cost at all), out of which they get a sufficient
level of satisfaction/utility to meet the families’ perceived basic needs. One natural
resources meeting those requirements is the everlasting partner of man, the forest, which in
the case of Albania occupies 36% of the total land area. Through the privatization of
agricultural land and the constant trend of livestock sub sector expansion, the pressure on
Albania’s natural resources, in particular in rural areas, has increased substantially. This
pressure is exerted not only by the fulfillment of local needs but also by profit interests, and
this national natural asset continues to be undervalued not only by the general public but
also by regulatory “owners” and authorities; as a consequence it will be misused.
    Those difficulties were augmented by the claims of ex-land owners, which led to many
other problems that continue to the present day. On the other hand, the entry of many
agricultural products into Albania from neighboring countries found unprepared and
unprotected Albanian new owners. Under such circumstances, many members of the labor
force from those agricultural units turned their attention to the possibility of emigration and
working on farms and in other jobs in neighboring countries. Accordingly part of the land
in Albania was transformed into non-arable or abandoned land (that were naturally
converted to poor quality pastures).
    Albanian forest and pastures resources have been degraded significantly over the last
50 years, particularly in areas close to rural communities. At the village level, adverse
human impact is manifest by unregulated and intense wood-harvesting to satisfy household
needs for fuel, timber and livestock fodder, and to exploit new commercial opportunities in
the domestic timber market.
    The process of de-collectivization and political transition has been rough on forest and
pasture for several reasons: a) in many areas, rural people vandalized their own production
environment, ostensibly to release pent-up frustrations that accumulated under socialism; b)
a temporary power vacuum allowed people to utilize forest resources basically at will, with
entrepreneurs free to harvest timber and firewood for sale in urban centers; and c)
households were once again thrown back upon their own resources to survive, creating an
insecurity which not only promoted short term land use perspectives, but also motivated
farmers to increase their flocks of sheep and goats to graze upon the hillsides.
    Firewood production is actually a very complex social and ecological problem. Forest
harvesting in hilly slopes followed by non-controlled grazing, has lead to land degradation
which nowadays is a common phenomena. Data in the Figure 2, shows that 60% of
families interviewed get the firewood directly from the forest. These are families with low
levels of income, often using plots of forest set aside for that purpose by the communes.
                 Figure 2. Sources of firewood used in household in Albania
               Directly from the forest of another
                                                     0.5%
                           commune

                                    Other source     2%

           Bought from a seller licensed from the
                                                       5.4%
                     Forestry services

                     Have not incurred the need             10.2%


                Bought from a unidentified seller                   22%


                  Directly from the nearby forest                             60%



Source: Social Economic Survey, ACER, 2001



2. COMMUNES: THE                       BASIC         ADMINISTRATIVE            UNIT    OF
COMUNAL FORESTRY
    Administrative division of Albania includes 374 communes and municipalities,
grouped in 36 districts and 12 circles. Circles are government units of second level, made
of a number of communes and municipalities with geographic, traditional, economic and
social connection as well as common interest. The function of circle (regions) are the
construction and implementation of regional policies and their harmonization with state
policies on a circle level as well as any other function given by the law.
    Communes and municipalities are the units of local government and among others they
are in charge of preparing the programs for local economic development and the protection
and development of forests, pastures and natural resources with local character.
    Communes are units where in 1992 the privatization of agriculture land was realized.
They have to manage the productive lands (300.000 ha) and refused lands (123.000 ha).
Considering the main criteria where the land reform was based and relatively uniform size
(an average 55 km 2 ), the communes can be considered as relatively homogenous units in
the land resources. Map No.1 shows the Administrative Divisions of Albania, with borders
of all units: Communes, Municipalities, Districts and Regions.
The process of forest and pastures transfer in Albania started with a pilot project in three
communes on Elbasani district in August 1994. After the pilot phase in 1996, World Bank
through Albanian Forestry Project (1996-2004) supported the forest transfer to the
communes. The Communal Forest and Pastures Management (CFPM) can be considered as
very successful in terms of achievements made but also for its pioneer role in this sector.
Never before has been the local forestry developed in Albania. During the Ottoman period,
the land and natural resources were recognized as God present and during the communist
period they belonged to the State. Nevertheless, traditional land ownership has always been
kept at village level and is today used for defining the boundaries and users of the
communal forests and pastures. The CFPMp is pioneer in communal forestry as it
developed the instruments and applied them to realize the transfer of forests and pastures
foreseen in the law. The proposed methodology has proven to be supported by the
communities and from 30 communes planed the transfer was realized in 138 communes in
the end of AFP.