Regional Forest Programmes: a Participatory Approach to Support Forest Based Regional Development : Proceedings of the Nordic Course on Regional Forest Strategies held in Mekrijärvi, Finland 17-24 June 1999 and the European Summer School on Regional Forest Strategies in Different Forest Cultures of Europe held in Marybank, Scotland 15-22 August 1999 : Regional Forest Programmes: a Participatory Approach to Support Forest Based Regional Development

Joensuu

1999

239 S.

Bandaufführung

61387

The Research course and the Summer school were the first events ever organised focusing on regional forest strategies of Nordic and European scale. Courses were supported the dissemination of the relevant information in the forest strategy formulation process at the regional level. Among other things the recently established COST E19 "National Forest Programmes" focuses the same issues at the national level, as these courses focused at the regional level. One of the main conclusions of the courses was that due to EU-level policies that often are increasingly aimed to work directly with regions, the importance of regional programmes is growing. Without the regional programmes for forestry, it remains difficult to justify the political importance of forest sector e.g. in regional development funding that is negotiated between European Commission and the representatives of local level authorities. In forestry, this supports the further development of regional forest strategies as programmes for regional development. As visible as the trend of increased regionality in Europe is the trend of increased peoplesÖ participation in decision making. Therefore, also forest strategy formulation should be encouraged to be based on participation processes where interests of various stakeholders are widely considered. However, the participation approach e.g. in forest strategy formulation should be separated from consultation processes where the principle aim is ti have more information for traditional decision making bodies rather than include people in decision making. The need for participatory approach in forest strategy formulation calls increased multidisciplinarity in forest policy formulation. Under the described trends, it is not acceptable to have solely foresters who prepare forest strategies for foresters. In the formulation of regional forest strategies or programmes, the process, the negotiations and the implementation should be integrally planned. Without well functioning negotiation processes and participatory approaches, the weight of a strategy or programme will remain low, and will have no changes for successful implementation. In an opposite case, if various stakeholders and common people participate the negotiations and decision making processes, the strategy is much easier to implement.