The good, the bad and the ugly: struggles in the Romanian forest commons Monica Vasile, Humboldt University, Romanian Institute of Sociology [email protected] Stefan Voicu, Central European University [email protected] Privatization in former socialist countries has been a topical issue in environmental studies, social sciences, humanities or legal studies. Although mostly ignored, forest commons were also reconstituted in the Romanian postsocialist land restitution process. More than 800 forest commons associations that claimed land were established during the early 2000s all over the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Today they own in total approximately 650.000 ha of forest, roughly 14% of the total forested surface of the country. The rest is either state-owned, a public asset of the local administration or privately owned. In the areas where these associations own large surfaces, the forest is not regarded simply as an economic resource, but it is a source of collective identification that has near-mythological resonances. Notwithstanding, never ending local conflicts stain the economic and social potential of forest commons, triggering ecological consequences. Moreover, the commons have stirred the interest of foreign and national capital owners, conservationists and local administrations impoverished by subsequent budget cuts since the neoliberal turn of the Romanian governments in the second decade of postsocialism. These actors are employing different regimes of justification to transform the forest commons into public or private goods. In this paper we analyze internal and external dynamics that increase the risk of the commons to shrink significantly or even cease to exist in the future, by looking at a number of such forest commons from a region in the Romanian Southern Carpathians called Tara Lovistei. We examine attempts to change current property laws in favor of local state administration or private owners, struggles

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The good, the bad and the ugly: struggles in the Romanian forest commons

Monica Vasile,Humboldt University, Romanian Institute of [email protected]

Stefan Voicu,Central European [email protected]

Privatization in former socialist countries has been a topical issue in environmental studies, social sciences, humanities or legal studies. Although mostly ignored, forest commons were also reconstituted in the Romanian postsocialist land restitution process. More than 800 forest commons associations that claimed land were established during the early 2000s all over the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. Today they own in total approximately 650.000 ha of forest, roughly 14% of the total forested surface of the country. The rest is either state-owned, a public asset of the local administration or privately owned. In the areas where these associations own large surfaces, the forest is not regarded simply as an economic resource, but it is a source of collective identification that has near-mythological resonances. Notwithstanding, never ending local conflicts stain the economic and social potential of forest commons, triggering ecological consequences. Moreover, the commons have stirred the interest of foreign and national capital owners, conservationists and local administrations impoverished by subsequent budget cuts since the neoliberal turn of the Romanian governments in the second decade of postsocialism. These actors are employing different regimes of justification to transform the forest commons into public or private goods.

In this paper we analyze internal and external dynamics that increase the risk of the commons to shrink significantly or even cease to exist in the future, by looking at a number of such forest commons from a region in the Romanian Southern Carpathians called Tara Lovistei. We examine attempts to change current property laws in favor of local state administration or private owners, struggles inside the communities for grabbing shares and profits and emerging forms of resistance.

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