Hinterland management

discussion forum	Give your opinion	Other opinions	Number 23 - april 1999

 
Editorial
Cellulose, concrete and cable

The territory and landscape of a country are dynamic and constantly evolving. The climate, geography, and social, cultural and economic change all influence the constant renewal of the environment. It is well known that there is very little rain in Catalonia, the topography is fragmented and the soils are poor. The traditional activities in the primary sectors of production have also gone into decline. The traditional farm population is disappearing, the landscape is being modified and many areas have an ageing population as well as experiencing rural emigration. The threat of forest fires also increases as the result of the abandonment of rural areas, and there have already been a large number of occurrences in different areas of Catalonia.
Resources do not become available for management purposes if forested areas are not made profitable. The result of this is the expansion of the volume of forested area in the country. Catalonia has been colonised by cellulose and this is an important fact that increases the risk of forest fires. Another more complex phenomenon that has made it even more difficult to seriously tackle the management of forested and mountain areas is the urban pressure to occupy forested areas. As Martí Boada explains in the conversation-interview with “Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i Cultura”, "no other culture has laid down so much concrete and bricks in forested areas". A phenomenon that, while not irreversible, is ecologically costing and will cost the country millions.
The population of rural areas is clearly ageing, forested areas are overgrown, and urbanisation is spreading concrete and bad taste. This is all happening at the same time that rural areas, within this process of transformation, have ridiculously low rates of profitability with respect to the traditional forestry industries.
Is the situation as serious as it is often described or are there glimpses of hope?
Foresight in public policy is undoubtedly of the highest priority, with policies that make forest management profitable. Of course, not in terms of the traditional forms of use but of renewed one. This means turning the forests into a point of cultural reference for the public and that they be made profitable for the owners at the same time through the encouragement of eco-tourism, agrotourism and cultural tourism.
In addition, the rural environment has a lot going for it in terms of becoming an influential place in the new information-based society. With cable and on-line connections, it's no longer so important where one lives or works or where ideas get created. Various experiences -the example of the Art and Nature Centre that is described in detail in the magazine, form the embryo that represents the arrival of certain social and digital entrepreneurs in the interior rural areas. To sum up, there's too much cellulose and concrete and the future of the interior rural areas has partly to do with the installation of cable. This is one of the strategies, maybe the most important, for preventing the regional disintegration of Catalonia •

Lluís Reales
Editor of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i cultura
 

The Mediterranean Forest in the twenty-first century
Eduardo Rojas
Civil Engineer, Associate Professor at the University of Lleida-Catalonia Forest Technological Centre.

The evolution of the Mediterranean forest, which has been conditioned by social-economic conditions, requires a new paradigm based on the pre-eminence of the external factors and its regulation through the use of market simulation tools. The complementing of conventional economic indicators with the new criteria favours an environmental behaviour that adjusts more closely to the social agents and provides a more realistic evaluation of the contribution of the forest to the social wellbeing. In order to internalise the forest external factors, the reversion the of ecotaxes and market creation through the redefinition of property rights.

Throughout the lengthy civilisation that has dwelt under the protection of the privileged environmental conditions of the Mediterranean coastline, the forest areas have been subjected to profound changes that meant their disappearance in some cases (the best land). In others, it lead to modification, which consisted in directing the natural processes to those models that were more useful to the social-economic conditions of the time.
In this way, the forest areas developed into the main source of energy until horizontal accessibility of fossil fuels with the implantation of the railway towards the end of the nineteenth century, extensive pasturelands and making resource of marginal lands, which were cultivated or abandoned in accordance with needs. The “artigues” or “shifting cultivation” provide the most tangible example of this use or reserve of the forest areas and their intensification was the main immediate cause for the current disappearance of the tropical rain forests. In addition to these basic uses, there have been many complementary ones, such as the requirement of wood for construction, there was no other option available until the beginning of the twentieth century, resin, cork, medicinal plants, honey and an extensive etc.
Until the collapse of the previous model, the Mediterranean forest was characterised by a wide variety of products that overlapped in both time and space. This also implied property rights that were often communal, overlapping and at times, confusing.

A historical introduction

This model, which is common to the entire European continent and the north of Africa, lead to the almost complete extermination of the forest in certain areas (the western edge). However, in the Mediterranean area, the open formations (dehesas and montados) to the far west and the extreme orography that is characteristic of coastal countries, together with the predominance of agriculture as the form of colonisation against that of animal farming on the Atlantic edge, allowed the survival of sufficient corridors of the original vegetation so that these could re-colonise the abandoned marginal lands from these strongholds, often in a spectacular manner , once the heavy pressure they were subjected to had disappeared, and which had peaked between the middles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Once the multiple, internal natural barriers , which were so characteristic of the Iberian geography , were pierced, first by the railways and then by the highway network, a radical transformation was produced from regional autarchy to economic specialisation. This was first on a scale of individual states, but more recently on a continental and world level. As a consequence of an extremely hard process of adaptation, where the surplus of labour fashioned the emerging industrial proletariat, the most competitive agricultural, animal farming or forest production direction was taken depending on each moment and time. This made it obligatory to clarify the confusing ownership rights that had their origin in medieval times, something that was not lacking in conflict .
The industrial revolution reduced the traditional pressure (firewood, short-lived cultivation and pasture) on the forests, demanding highly specific products, but in large quantities. Mine props, beams for construction and later wood pulp for paper manufacture are some of the new market demands that would provoke a revaluation of the conifer forest, which had been underrated until then, except by the navy, for local uses.
Forestry science came into being throughout Europe, and the main objectives were the recovery of the forest mass, pre-eminently by reforestation, the creation of an autonomous forestry administration with wide powers and the defence and planning of public forest. The demand for conifer wood and the need to cover large areas of devastated wasteland forced the use of frugal conifers, especially Pinus species. To frivolously criticise historic processes, as has been done in the past decades, is quite intrinsically sterile, and it should be remembered that the reverse process had been going on for centuries, where preference had been given to leafy species , and very especially to the holm oak (carbon) and the defects that were cause by the appropriation of the best trees by the navy for naval construction .
The lack of knowledge during these times of the basic tools of environmental economy, the modest standards of living and the obvious priority objectives of public funds prevented any multifunction focus forest management as it is known today. In spite of all this, it was during this phase that the bases for the first protective measures were laid down, such as the national parks, which were set up in 1916. From the very beginning, there was a protective pre-eminence for the forest present and action taken by the forest administration as clearly demonstrated by the important hydrological-forest restoration work carried out on basin headwaters and in the south east of the peninsular and also by the very name of Hydrological Forest Divisions given to the territorial units of the just emerging forest administration in 1901 .

The contemporaneous forest

Nowadays, the situation of our forests has radically changed, even though the economic and legal framework remain anchored in the previous phase. Economic globalisation has left our forest far behind as far as competitiveness is concerned for many reasons.
• The low consubstantial quality of most of our forest
• Low production
• Mountainous with a lack of infrastructure
• Lack of capitalisation (small diameter, large number of trees)
• High risks (fires)
• Legal insecurity
Although it is possible to directly act on some of these factors, it is still no less certain that the main obstacles are cosubstantial and those modifiable factors could lead to social rejection in consequence of the growing environmental concern (the construction of forest circuits, lack of regulation). Nevertheless, no excuse is valid for not trying to influence that which could be corrected (improve efficiency in the fight against forest fires, the improvement of technical plans for forest management etc).
The lack of competitiveness of our forest has provoked widespread abandonment of which we are not sufficiently aware of the inertial effect, the extreme extension in both time and space consubstantial with forest management and because at times we are unable to see the forest because of the trees. One only has to travel through the extensive burnt-out area left behind after a forest fire in order to realise the chaotic structure of the now burnt-down naked forest when the suggestive green covering, which disguised a completely unsatisfactory situation, has disappeared.
The progressive specialisation and intensification of farming, where the dividing line with industry is more and more difficult to appreciate, together with the loss of the historic roots with consubstantial production factors, soil and climate, is the cause of two significant phenomena:
• The horizontal enlargement of the forest mass (loss of the checkerboard land pattern), which creates extensive horizontal continuities
• The appearance of a previously unknown interface between the urban environment and that of the forest .
The late industrial and infrastructure development provoked a concentration development in only a few poles, which produced large agglomerations that drew the population from their respective areas of influence. In Catalonia, 65 % of the population resides in the four most densely populated regions that only account for 5% of the territory. 4.5% of the population lives in the 16 least populated regions which account for 46% of the territory (Institute for Catalan Studies –IEC- 1992). This demographic-territorial unbalance, where there are hardly any intermediate regions, ranges from demographic densities that are more characteristic of certain Asiatic agglomerations than European (2,500 inhabitants/m2) to densities that are only found in Europe in the inhospitable regions of Scandinavia (15 – 20 inhabitants/m2), is the cause of many social and environmental problems.
When faced by this obvious economic weakness and political vacuum in a growing proportion of the territory that makes up the forest areas (more than 60%), the temptations arises, which is understandable in view of the demographic unbalance and therefore in election terms, to use them as tools in order to satisfy the compensatory requirements typical of such insane demographic concentration. Examples range from the original plans of the Barcelona Transitional Government that tended to compensate the chronic deficit of the green belts by means of a corridor of natural parks around the metropolis, to the modern policy of protected spaces. Together with the fire policy, public action in forest areas has gone little further in the last 25 years.

The impossibility of the “wilderness areas”

The idea of transforming forest areas into wilderness areas in order to compensate for the extreme environmental degradation that has occurred in areas where 80% of the population lives is a policy that is doomed to failure for many reasons:
• Forest areas are covered by secondary vegetation in various phases of recovery, the progression of which require certain stabilising interventions that favour greater horizontal and vertical diversity and not that of wilderness areas like those existing in new settled countries .
• The conservation priorities of today are to be found, without any doubt, in the habitats belonging to the densely populated areas (wet areas), in addition to the biological corridors .
• The vertical and horizontal accumulation of combustible material is the only variable that can be previously acted on in order to reduce the violence of a forest fire. Therefore, anything that favours its expansion to the maximum capacity of the ecosystem is an act of total irresponsibility.
• The dimensions of wild areas is not sufficient to permit self-regulation and evolution. On the other hand, one cannot exclude distortion factors from the outside, especially fire.
• Politically, it is extremely ingenuous to think that the long-term measures that are necessary to ensure the preservation of these areas were going to be achieved through the implantation of widespread use by the vast majority of the population and lacking even a minority whose livelihood is directly related to the survival of the resource. Such extreme demographic tensions in a territory as small as Catalonia will only very rarely end in benefit of the weakest (least populated areas).
• Property rights and use by the affected population cannot be overwhelmed for the sake of general interest by means of systematic draining to token limits of property rights by acting on the edge of legality and taking advantage of the privileged position awarded by the administrative right of the administration, the slowness of justice and the situation of social collapse in forest areas, but, which in any case should be compensated.
The main error in this option is definitely in the sign, minimum, however, it is crucial. The fact that, as the result of economic division, the importance of the forest of forest today is based on its external factors cannot set off certain functions against others, concluding that abandonment is the most rational option from a strictly accounting point of view. Quite the contrary, it is advocating the search for new methods that will allow the value of the forest to emerge by summing together all its functions based on the advances in environmental economy.
Towards a new holistic economic accounting

If we define economics as the science of scarce goods and not merely an accounting register, the official approval of certain indicators such as the GNP and the added value have pushed very important aspects into the background, which are crucial to the understanding of social-economic processes, but which are not apparently reflected in the national economy .
Negative external factors

All productive processes inexorably imply external effects on the population and the surrounding environment (the consumption of space, water, energy and the production of waste and noise etc). Although an efficient market will ensure the optimum allocation of resources, the lack of imputation on a business and national economy level of this damage systematically places too high a value on its contribution to general welfare. It would be interesting to develop a negative external factor index for each sector as a correcting element.

 Ie-:  VAs · k   k < 1

Ie-: Negative external factor
VAs: Sector added value x
k: Correction factor

Positive external factors

There are also exceptional activities with a very high k (greater than 0.9) and at the same time, a parallel positive external factors production, which could benefit other sectors or society as a whole. In addition to the classic example of the beekeeper with respect to the fruit grower, we could also cite a public or private park located next to a block of buildings or a wood next to a tourist zone or a residential area. There are three possible options, forget the external factors on the pain of prejudicing the optimum allocation of resources, oblige the state on principle to ensure the positive external factors on the lack of a market or establish new accounting mechanisms that deduct the added value from the sector that receives the added value, which in fact corresponds to the positive external factor received at the same time as the implementation of compensatory tools for also transferring it from a national accounting level to a business level.

  VAsrc – Ve+ = VAsrr
  VAsoc + Ve+ = VAsor

VAsrc: Accountable added value from the receiving sector
Ve+: Positive external factor value
VAsrr: True added value of the receiving sector
VAsoc: Accountable added value from the offering sector
VAsor: True added value of the offering sector

Durability of wealth

Neither the current economic accounting models nor the current taxation system takes into consideration the durability of generated wealth. A volatile service (an economic firework), consumer goods, long-term goods or long-term investment are considered as being on an equal footing. We should not be surprised by the paradox whereby the proportion of current wealth that will remain on a long-term basis is extremely small, in spite of the daily assurances provided by economic statistics that we are presently living in the moment of greatest welfare humanity has ever known. Quite on the contrary, even though there are hundred year-old and even thousand year-old investments (historical and artistic heritage), there are still invaluable returns awaiting us, especially from the tourist sector. There is no doubt that, today there are societies that are considered to be quite primitive, yet invest an important part of their wealth in goods of long durability. We should, therefore, develop a durability index for the generated wealth.

 Ip = VAs1 x D + VAs2 x D + ... VAsn
          ? VA
Ip: Durability index
VAs1: Added value from sector 1
D: Durability (years)

Degree of sustainability

Although certain human activities are or could be sustainable (agriculture, fishing, forestry operations and culture etc), others are, by definition, unsustainable since they are linked to the consumption of non-renewable resources. It would be necessary to develop sustainability degrees in relation to an optimum model. Nevertheless, the inter-sector comparison of these indices is very limited.

  GSaps = % Smas
  GSans =      1
                     Ir/Io

GSaps: The degree of an activity that is potentially sustainable
% Smas: Percentage of sustainability in relation to an optimum model of sustainable activity
GSans: The degree of an activity that is non-sustainable
Ir: Weighted average of the true non-sustainable indicators (input of non-renewable raw materials, contaminant output)
Io: Weighted average of the optimum non-sustainable indicators (input of non-renewable raw materials, contaminant output)

The interrelationship with other sectors

Although the added value theory detracts the prior contributions of other sectors, it does not take into account the time when the production chain produces the added value. It therefore considers a strategic production at the beginning of a chain as being equal to one at the end. In complex chains linked to raw material production, all the generated wealth, as well as that of other sectors, should, in some way, be assigned to the original sector, at least for suitable evaluating its true strategic importance as an economic driving force.

  FSE = ? VAGS+
      VAS
FSE: Strategic sector function
VAs: Sector added value
? VAGS+: Sum of the added value as generated from this moment throughout the entire chain, including the added value of other sectors

The degree of economic concentration

Modern economic activity tends to concentrate along certain poles of development, which produce important inter-territorial demographic tension . It would be convenient to analyse the degree of contribution of each economic sector to the economic concentration process or, on the contrary, emphasise those activities, such as forestry operations, that contribute most to the territorial rebalance.

  Gdt = % Tbd

  Grt1 = % VAs/?VATbd
  Grt2 = % Tbd (VA s nº1)

Gdt: Degree of territorial imbalance
Tdb: Territory with low population density (for example < 50% mean density)
Grt: Degree of territorial rebalance
VAs nº 1: Sector added value of the first sector of economic activity

Further considerations
Finally, it should be remembered that there are other things to be considered, not by negligible legislation, but those such as, security, culture, religion and morals that the prevailing models have completely forgotten, although they are very difficult to evaluate. It should be mentioned that this type of error has been committed by both the market economies and by the planned economies, until their downfall, both of which are characterised by their sector focus.

A new paradigm for a new era

Forest constitutes the prime use of our territory (43%) and the overall forestry area as a whole reaches over 60%. This territory supports and ensures a long series of functions, some of a productive nature, which are comparable to agriculture except in that which refers to very long production periods, and others of a tertiary type overwhelmingly made up of non-commercial services or positive external factors that are vital to our society.
• Environmental support (water cycle regulation, prevention of erosion and spates, global scale climatic regulation, reduction of the greenhouse effect etc).
• Landscape framework and leisure premise of quality tourism both on the coast and in mountainous areas.
• A refuge for bio-diversity
A suitable offer, within a country that is densely populated and demographically unbalanced, of these external factors that lack a market, cannot be left to the unpredictable results of its low degree of competitiveness and especially at the mercy of the anarchy of the flames. In any case, the accelerated international processes  force us to dedicate preferential political attention to the forest from the recognition that the external factors that they emit can no longer continue to be the one left out of the productive orientation, nor the pretext for its pillaging, the conversion into the point of these spaces and the precarious demography that they still support.
It is time for a paradigmatic change in relation to the forest and society, which is precisely the definition of forest policy, where, on the one hand, the greater importance of its external factors on the quality of life of twenty-first century society is recognised, but on the other, compensating mechanisms are established in order to ensure its economic and social viability and efficiency that consist of an equitable distribution of charges and benefits among the donor areas (forests) and the receptor areas (urban) . This change is framed within the new social pact promoted by the current French Government in the reform process of such a venerable, but obsolete 1827 Code Forestière .
The fact that, due to formal legal hindrance, forest does not at least appear in name in the Agenda 2000 Document (European Commission, 1998) should lead to hasty conclusions. Quite on the contrary, the central themes of this extremely important document are fully coincident with the main functions or external factors of the forest areas (quality of life, improvement of the environment, carbon dioxide (CO2) fixing, justification of the rural development policy and source of endogenous employment, among others.

Governing principles

Sustainability
According to the definition provided by the Bruntland Report (1987)  sustainability is understood as being the prudent use of renewable natural resources by the current generation so that it does not condition the options of future generations. It must be remembered that the important natural and forest heritage that is available to the current generation is not a legacy from virgin nature, but from a conservation spirit, in the widest sense of the words, and of the effort and sacrifice of generations that has been founded on common law and included in the Catalan Civil Code.

Multi-functionality
The time has now come to recognise, with all its consequences, that the justification for the political prioritisation of forest areas are the positive external factors that ensure the forest, principally in the Mediterranean area, due to the confluence of a high-density population, the high impact of tourism of the economy, a high external factor/production ratio and finally, the forest fires. If one wishes to ensure an optimum long-term external factor offer, the option of penalising the guarantors (forestry workers) is not only unjust, it is also economically inoperative and inefficient, it will be necessary to simulate as best as possible the non-existent external factor market at the same time that the beneficiaries jointly contribute to its finance . It simply is not acceptable that the public authorities are used by one of the parties to promote a certain product (wood) or to maintain the status quo of the cost-free status indefinitely of the basic production input (countryside for tourism).

Social and territorial equity
Ensuring the external factors cannot be in contradiction with the social and territorial equity. The rights of minority groups, especially if these are territorially concentrated in the extensive forest areas, should not be sacrificed at the altar of the interests of the majority, no matter how disproportionate the numerical relationship. This political practice has formed the principal theme for the Spanish forest policy since the “Mesta” (a historic grouping of Castillian cattle breeders) and the Navy , right up to the current policy on protected areas . It is, however, only justified in poor countries, but in any case, never when a level of life, such as that existing in our country, is reached. The demographic-territorial unbalance is one of the gravest, fundamental problems existing in Catalonia, and in Spain, in general. It is also one of the most important differentiating aspects with respect to the surrounding countries, so that any forest policy that does not positively affect it is doomed to failure from the very beginning.

Social-economic efficiency
The budgetary restrictions imposed by the Euro, the disappearance of all types of medium-term protectionism, globalisation and the strict legislation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against subventions to productive sectors means restrictive budgetary policies where the only action allowed is to compensate for market failures, especially if market simulation tools are used. Against the tactic, which is almost certainly incorrect, of prolonging the agony that characterises the agricultural policies, the forest policy, because of its long-term nature, must move ahead towards the future, and through the recognition of the current restrictions, should firmly decide on the creation of artificial markets, whether by creating new ownership rights  or by the application of ecotaxes in order to optimise the output from the external factors of the forest.

Joint responsibility and participation
Because of their long-term nature, forest policies requires great stability and wide-ranging social support, especially, although not exclusively from the key agents in forest policy: private and communal forestry experts. This negotiated model, which is deeply rooted in Catalan idiosyncrasies, and the other territories of the old Aragon Kingdom  has had a privileged exponent in the Centre for Forest property whose transformation into the Forestry Agency was approved by the Catalan Parliament. One should not forget that the Spanish Constitution (1978) is one of the most progressive in the western world as far as public participation in collective matters is concerned.

Cross-sectoriality
Without full recognition of the dissolution of the prior vertical reality of the forest towards a new and still to be defined cross-sector reality that is characterised by multiple overlapping with the most varied fields of political or economic action, it will be impossible to attain a situation whereby the forest is able suitably fit into our society, nor will it achieve the sufficient political interest that the planted goals require .

Redefining the contents of property rights

Historically, whenever there has been a paradigmatic change, there has also been a corresponding modification to the complex balance that characterises property rights. When the modern property rights were defined in the nineteenth century, many volatile forest products (mushrooms, fruit and pinecones etc) were completely marginal and even allowed certain country populations that existed in conditions of extreme poverty to earn a livelihood or they were completely lacking in the knowledge of tertiary uses that went beyond local festivities. It was absurd to extend the definition of property to such extremes. The most paradigmatic case is that of hunting that has completely changed from being an essential source of food in the diet of the country population into a luxury service that development is often slowed down by legal action with a Roman origin such as res nullius.
In addition, the nineteenth century definition does not establish any obligation towards the sustainable management of the resource and later legislation that attempted to place limits of the property rights came up against the Civil Law. This produced contradiction between legislation that did nothing to help reach the sought after laudable objective . The undeniable utility of property rights must be recognised as a regulating element for the natural renewable resources when it includes certain minimum amounts of responsibility. In the case of renewable natural resources where the capital coincides with the return (forest, fishing), it is only possible to internalise the sustainability when its use is restricted to such a small number of users that the self-containment of the immediate harvest of the resources is compensated by a permanent return .
Many activities that go beyond these strict boundaries would never have been developed without the artificial establishment of property rights (the case of sporting event retransmissions would be an example).
Within the undeniable complexity of this question, it is quite evident that holistic regulation is required for the tertiary use of the forest areas, that goes far beyond mere specific restrictive measures that are designed to minimise the more obvious impacts and which should at least:
• Clearly differentiate between the economic enjoyment of goods or services that, in any case, require patrimonial authorisation, from the strictly social enjoyment that is basically free.
• Impartially and completely regulate the tolerated social use, which, in any case, should never include the transformation of the property, by inversion of the current concept of restriction for that of permission.
• Exempt the forest areas from the application of acquisitive prescription in order to avoid the difficulties that the risk of the disappearance of the property that access by third parties usually entails.
• To clearly widen the property rights over any goods or service, including hunting, which may generate economic returns and exceeds social use.
• To enlarge the concept of property in the case of mineral water bottling plants in the hydrographic basin.
• Include the obligation of careful, sustainable management of the natural values (bio-diversity) within the dominical rights.

Towards a new environmental control

Analysing the options
By discarding the traditional options, whether by undervaluing general against individual interest (“laiser faire”) or by the true confiscation of the rights of those affected, and searching for new alternatives where necessary. By discarding, we mean for the sake of general interest that is unsuitable for the synergistic reality that characterises our natural resources (overlapping of functions and rights) where sterile comparison has been occurring in Spanish forest policy from the very beginning right up to today. This situation is probably due to the lack of tradition and development of the social function of property, a doctrine with Germanic origin), and the limitation of our rights that has a marked Roman origin to two extreme situations: private property versus public utility.
The closest references are the subventions, especially in the agricultural case. The enduring problems that can be seen in the transposition to the forest situation should act as a warning. Among those handicaps that are produced by the subventions as a formula for incentives for external factors we can find:
• The structural financial problems since the beneficiary of the external factors does not coincide with the financing body
• The subsidies are insufficient to provide incentives to the external factors when these substantially diverge from the productive objectives (reinforcing the productive element).
• The threats of legal action from the EU and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for unfair competition by the productive countries.
• The financial situation for the forestry expert particularly in those forest areas with very low production.
In fact, environmental economists are recommending that for positive external factors incentives, traditional focus should be abandoned, “Producer Gets Principle” (PGP) in order to pass on to the “Beneficiary Pays Principle” (BPP) . The following reasons may be found among those that advocate this second principle:
• Payment is made for the generated effect and not for the produced costs, this will also contribute to the improvement of the economic efficiency of the output of the external factors and foster competition between the bidders.
• The PGP often creeps towards the social policy, something, which in fact, is currently happening in the PAC  and is provoking outside debate that is not providing any benefit whatsoever to the objective of encouraging the output of external factors.
• The focus that is excessively directed towards the producer tends to confuse the problems with general interest.
• The PGP finance is normally linked to ordinary budgets that suffer from important inherent defects of the status quo that are caused by the classic phenomenon of the patronage system, making redirection difficult for motives of the modification of public objectives or scientific advances.
• BPP is more flexible and dynamically adaptable to the true objectives, and comes much closer to the simulation of the desired markets and is much less conditioned to lobbies that PGP.
• Unlike PGP, BPP is perfectly adaptable to the legislation of free competition of the OMC and the EU.
In short, if the demand for wood is ensured through voluntary market instruments, there is no longer any sense in ensuring the demand for positive external factors through administrative instruments of a coercive nature, nor should responsibility be assumed for a significant part of the costs without any direct relationship with the sought-after output.

Development of the proposals
While PGP could advocate a single premium that compensates the various external factors of the forest , the BPP has no other possibility than to be based on a specific system for each one of the outputs without a market.

1. Goods and products with markets
It is quite evident that by consistently applying the previously explained principles, many outputs that are assigned in a chaotic manner, would be converted in goods or services with a market and would become incorporated into the economic circuit . Here, special mention should be made of:
• Hunting, particularly in those areas that are most parcelled out (the northern and Mediterranean coasts).
• Mushrooms, particularly truffles.
• Medicinal plants, fruit, asparagus, and snails etc.
• Pinecones
• Decorative foliage
• Routes for walking, cycling, 4 x 4 and on horseback etc.
• Commercial filming and photographing etc.
• Mineral water (hydrographic basin)

2. Water, erosion and spates.
There is no room for doubt that one of the most important and vital functions of the Mediterranean and Alpine forest is a classic external factor the internalisation of which cannot be taken beyond the specific case of bottled water where the reversion of ecotaxes is necessary. This case is quite easy since the precedent of the hydraulic levy exists in the Catalan internal basin for the maintenance of the hydraulic infrastructure. If it is true that the forests regulate the water cycle in an unparalleled manner, reducing erosion, increasing the life of dams, improving the quality of water and at the same time can prevent the formation of snow spates in certain circumstances, the increase of the scope of these rates so that they include the green hydraulic infrastructure would appear to be justified. The criteria for reversion should be based on objective hydraulic criteria, such as the importance of the basin, location within the basin, slope, degree of coverage, height of vegetation and soil type etc, which can be obtained from the technical management plans. Staring from an average consumption of 150 litres/inhabitant/day and a rate of 0,03 Euros per cubic metre destined to the forest, the forecast collection would be around 10 to 12 million Euros . It should be emphasised that theses rates would help to contribute to provide an incentive to greater savings in a country where the prices for water are still well below the European average in spite of being a scarce resource in most of the Iberian geography.

3. CO2 fixing
In the case of CO2 emissions, where the possibility of the creation of a world market for emission rights where those that exempt from emission rights or those who can demonstrate CO2 fixing could sell their rights to those who require more emission rights comes up against the necessary planetary character of CO2 and the multiplicity of protagonists with insurmountable technical-legal difficulties.  There remains then, the option of reversion of the ecotaxes that are framed within the debate that was started at the beginning of the 90s as a consequence of a proposal of a tax on CO2 emissions by the European Commission (Agenda 2000). There is considerable experience available on the taxation of energy, although it is more in the line of collection guidelines than environmental.
The fixing of CO2 by forest is a complex question and is still not completely resolved by science. There are two type of CO2 fixing, a) temporal or supplementary (ex situ), which is linked to the use of wood and its retention for a certain amount of time or the substitution of fossil fuels in the case of firewood or biomass. b) the in situ fixing linked to the phenomenon of forest biomass increase (both horizontal and vertical).
In the first case, since it is a necessarily temporary retention or a detriment of the negative external factors, the application of ecotaxes to the substitute wood products in relation to its CO2 emissions is sufficiently understood. In the second, by comparing inventories, one can obtain, with a high degree of accuracy, the evolution of CO2 fixed in each forest area in the form of trunks. However, extremely wide gaps exist about the fixing in the rest of the ecosystem (branches, pine needle, leaves and soil etc), this leads to a structural under-evaluation. On a Spanish level, a rate of 0.2 Euros/litre limited to petrol, which only supposes a small fraction of the CO2 emissions, would be sufficient to establish a noticeable incentive of 11 Euros per cubic metre in the increase of stock .

4. Countryside landscape
The countryside landscape is an evident case of external factor, which is not widespread as the water situation, but is linked to certain beneficiaries, in this case to tourism in general and strategically located residences. Except in very exceptional case, especially small islands and with a very structured civil society, it would be impossible to reach satisfactory market solutions . This requires a search for innovating solutions, such as setting apart a percentage of the generated fiscal resources (for example, VAT). These funds would be administrated by public consortiums on a solid tourist scale (x coast, island), together with the active participation of affected social agents , which would be destined to make good any more notable market failures by mutual agreement and which would allow an optimum output of the tourist resource, such as:
• Countryside
• Historical-artistic heritage
• Pathways and tracks etc
• Tourist diffusion
If 10% of the VAT collected in tourism, which has been estimated as being 10% of the total collected VAT, were destined, then these consortiums would have a total of 260 million Euros (“El País”, 1998). To this would have to be added those amounts co-generated by already existing programmes . The reversion would be applied based on medium-term contracts (5 to 10 years) and on an objective points system (location, conservation state, fire-protection measures, and the countryside landscape quality etc).

5. Construction
Although the right to construct (ius edificandi) cannot be understood as a right that is inherent to the property or its ownership and its limitation cannot be strictly indemnified, the reality is that the agricultural-forest properties are characterised by two values, one that is strictly related with its primary productivity and the other is one of expectation. This is the only possible explanation for the relatively high prices for land in our country. The fact that, because of an act of legislation, in principle all building land accrues amounts in accordance with the new Land Act, this however, excludes from the very beginning the forest areas and those that are protected by express legal protection supposes discriminatory treatment, however much they cannot be taken to court in the strict meaning.
By following the nearest prevailing model in American cities in respect to the volume available for construction, it is proposed to start a market of building rights whereby the bidders would be the holders of building rights awarded to those affected by town planning restrictions in proportion to the degree of restriction . The buyers would be any new construction or enlargement in a permitted space at most, with a certain coefficient in accordance with the social use of the building. In this way, the expectant value of the rustic property would be respected by means of the most efficient and fairest of procedures, that of the free market, which would also minimise administrative involvement.

6. Bio-diversity
Bio-diversity is an external factor that does not have any direct beneficiary, so that it must be directly financed from taxes. Another thing is that, due to the enormous difference between endemic species of the various regions of the continent. The EU is jointly contributing to its finance.
In addition, the areas with greatest natural value and protected areas are normally those with smallest population density, so that the available return that can support any fiscal burden are disproportionate between the various regions of the EU. This means, that by also systematically applying the subsidy principle in the finance there would be a unfortunate choice between not complying with the commitment to preserve the natural resources or drain funds from other essential public funds in order to comply with the levels demanded by those who refuse to co-finance the common EU natural heritage .
The reversion of these funds would be transmitted in a medium-term (5 to 10 years) contractual manner (market simulation) based on objective criteria (indicators) that, in all cases, require the disposition of technical plans . This solution would be much more in agreement with the objective needs of the conservation of nature in an old settled country as, without any doubt, is our case.

Conclusion

The principles of sustainability and multi-functionality, and also the objective transport of the retribution of the external factors require the generalisation of forest planning as a basic tool. The joint responsibility of those affected through innovating administrative formulas, such as the proposed Countryside Consortiums or the Forest Agencies in parliamentary discussion form the second basic pillar within the framework of society’s democratic development and greater implication in the collective future. Finally, the proposed fiscal instruments would allow, not only a positive non-incentive effect on the emission of negative external factors and an incentive for the output of positive external factors that are sorely yearned for by society. This requires a flexible fiscal legislation that would harmonise the collection interests of the Tax Office, with the objectives of the environmental policy and would thus facilitate the use of part of the collected resources for active environmental policies .
It is urgently required to overcome the traditional remoteness of environmental uneasiness with respect to the world of economy for the sake of a multi-disciplinary holistic focus of such challenges. The environmental economy, once methodologies have been developed for the integration of positive and negative external factors, is a fundamental tool for environmental policy. The challenge is located in getting right the design and modulation of the economic tools that compensate market failure much more than the binary and inflexible conventional administrative measures . The forest value, absurdly relegated in the prevailing economic models, will come into full bloom when new environmental accounting models are developed. A truly multi-disciplinary challenge •
 
 

  1 See. Quezel (1988)
  2 The extreme isolation situation of the Aran Valley should be remembered here, which endured until the opening of the Vielha Tunnel only 50 years ago. See López Gómez (1997).
  3 Although this fact is common to the Mediterranean peninsulas (Italy and Greece) their long shapes facilitated seaway communication.
  4 This is the starting points for the Jaen olive groves, the Valencia orange orchards and the cereal steppes of Castilla.
  5 For further information on the importance of conifers in Iberian forests, see Blanco et al. (1997)
  6 See de la Cruz (1995)
  7 See Gómez Mendoza (1992)
  8 Of all the main species that are present in Catalonia, only two pine species (Pinus sylvestris and P. uncinata), together with the beech, can be considered as producers of quality wood, in addition to the specific case of the cork oak (Quercus suber). The total only represents 30% of the forest.
  9 See Vélaz (1995)
 10 There is a need to differentiate between old settled countries and new settled countries. In the latter, ownership tends to be of the state, which, together with the low demographic density, facilitates the delimitation of extensive, practically virgin, wilderness areas. In the former, the historic action of man throughout the whole area and the property rights force the use of completely different conservation strategies. In fact, many problems seen in the policies of European protected areas stem from an unchecked direct transposition of policies and provisions from other continents (CTFS, 1997).
 11 See Laguna (1997)
 12 See also Kula (1992), Romero (1994) and Pearce (1995)
 13 Graph 1.
 14 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992), Kyoto Earth Summit (1997), pan-European processes in Strasbourg (1990), Helsinki (1993) and Lisbon (1996)
 15 See Graph 2.
 16 Bianco (1996)
 17 Quote from the European Parliament (1998)
 18 See Article 45.2 of the Spanish Constitution (1978)
 19 See de la Cruz (1995)
 20 See CTFS (1997) and Boada (1993 and 1994)
 21 The SA or the retransmission rights are no more than virtual formulas created by political volition in order to achieve greater economic efficiency.
 22 See Vecens Vices (1980).
 23 See Graph 3.
 24 A symptomatic case is that of the hunting enclosures that were restricted by the Natural Area Act 4/1989, while they are understood to be a consubstantial Sunday right in Civil Law (1889).
 25 Perhaps in is not coincidence that forestry as a science came into being on the Continent, where it is characterised by the pre-eminence of forms of private and communal property. It should be remembered here the differences between the areas of inshore fishing with quasi-communal exploitation in fishing zones in totally exhausted international waters.
 26 See Hanley and Haley et al. (1996. Brown (1994) and Blochlinger (1994). See in relation with the long-term perspectives of the PAC (Maxwell, 1996).
 27 Concatenate the criteria for aid or forest premiums to conditions such as the origin and dimensions of the returns, residence and age etc.
 28 See Public Works Act for Tree Coverage in Castilla y Leon (1994)
 29 See Merlo (1998)
 30 This encourages the joint responsibility of all those affected upriver in benefit of the water quality.
 31 The current hydraulic rate is, in fact, 0.08 Euros per cubic metre.
 32 See Rojas (1995). It should be remembered that without any incentive whatsoever and only considering the trunks, the Spanish forest currently fixes some 17% of the CO2 emissions. As an indication only, to completely revert to the rate established in 1991 in Sweden of 0.03 Euros per kilogram of CO2. The incentive for increment of stock would be some 26 Euros (OCDE 1994; BUM, 1994).
 33 It has been recently proposed to establish a green card for Menorca as Heritage to Humanity, quasi-obligatory for all tourists who arrive on the island and which would include discounts for all main offers (hotels, restaurants, rental cars and tickets etc). The returns would be destined, together with the exterior promotion, to provide incentives for the countryside and the maintenance of the historical-artistic heritage as a basic resource for quality tourism.
 34 Basically agriculturists, forestry experts, the tourist sector and local adminitsrations.
 35 Agricultural-environmental measures of the PAC, subventions for the restoration of the historical-artistic heritage, Lider, etc.
 36 Correction coefficients would modulate from the simple forest space with authorisation for building by minimum unit (25 Ha in Catalonia) to a national park.
 37 See Graph 4.
 38 See Moog et al. (1992) and Bianco (1998)
 39 All this advocates the preferential use of the figure of environmental rates with respect to that of taxes.
 40 See Sejak (1997)
 
 

Forestry, a profitable business?
Joan Ignasi Castelló i Vidal
Head of the Municipal Technical Office for the Prevention of Forest Fires, Provincial Council of Barcelona.

Forest occupy a large part of Catalonia, but their timber is a type that does not make them profitable. Therefore, alternative products should be looked for which would encourage the preservation of the Catalan woodlands, especially when one takes into account that 72% are privately owned. In short despite the advances in forest management in the last decades, ways should be sought to make the woodlands a profitable business.
 

Whilst the activities of the European peoples are drifting away from agriculture and the ancient tasks of hunting and gathering, the interest of society in the countryside and the woods is growing. In the last years of this century there has been a popular explosion of interest in the woodlands, the larger mammals and certain species of birds. Including insects and reptiles, which in times gone by were considered horrid, have their place in the heart of our ecology.
The woodlands for their size and extension, for their mystery and for the role they play and have played in history occupy a central place in this current of  adulation. This enthusiasm for the forests is taking place  practically everywhere. Science, for example, is concerned about almost everything to do with trees and that related to them. It has actually counted from the number of petals on the buds of beech trees to be average radial growth of the trunk of the pine, has studied the vertical structure of woods in relation to the light, has calculated the productive activity of leaves and has meticulously studied a thousand other things. Never have we known so much about the functioning of the woods as we do today, we have never had so many tools and theories to ensure their correct management. Some of this new knowledge has been criticised by observers interested in these matters because often, they say, we have underestimated mankind  (with his virtues, defects, obsessions and needs) as a determining factor in the functioning of the past, present and future of the woodlands. This, of course, does not take away any interest in the work and discoveries made and this reproof which the academic view has helped to disseminate of an ideal and unrealistic image of the woodlands is probably exaggerated.
Travel agencies, in an altogether different fashion, have contributed to this fervour by including the tropical forest and other highly attractive forest scenarios, such as national parks and other biological reserves to the legendary alpine holidays with their pines and slate roofs, which greatly influenced the start of the Spanish economic development in the building and landscaping of our forest urbanisations and which continue to inspire many modern gardens in our Cerdanya, to mention a specific place.
And what to say, as well, of the contribution that another movement which has obtained great importance in the second half of this century, ecology, which has closed a brilliant stage by introducing with great success the concepts of biodiversity and subsistence, so tied into the woods, which unanimously have been the subjects of two world conventions and have been the core of many of the debates that are held today? If some have expressed doubt about the obviousness of these concepts and have called them banal, rhetorical, publicity seeking or useless, others have replied by creating innumerable centres for biodiversity and associations, laws, regulations and standards for subsistence.
These groups, basing themselves on the above concepts and on others more or less transcendental, have done a great job which is worthy of recognition by all in defence of the woodlands in general and of the tropical forests in particular by fiercely fighting against the progressive transformation of the rain forests into arable and pasture land. The rulers of certain tropical countries have sarcastically commented, not without reason, that by these campaigns the developing countries are being obliged to pay a tribute to redeem the harsh transformation of the American and European forests done by our ancestors and have suggested, with no sense of shame, that we mind our own business.
With such important precedents as these, and others which we could mention, it is difficult to discuss woodlands using new or fresh ideas which could arouse any enthusiasm. If, as in this paper, we are trying to make comments about the economic reality of the Catalan woodlands, the ownership structure or the policies that have been tried out in these last twenty years at home, burdensome and unpopular subjects, the task becomes difficult and thankless. Thus, begging  the pardon of the reader for the subject selected, which to some could even seem to be impolite, we will discuss later on certain aspects of the Catalan woodlands which will not be, as we have said, those about botany, ecology, fauna, art or religion but those relating to woodlands and business, which in a market place economy as ours, seems to us to be a relevant issue.

The first link in the chain

In Catalonia we are fortunate to have two very recent forestry statistical inventories. On the one hand the State and on the other the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, through the Forestry Applications and Research Centre (CREAF) independently collected, some years ago, diverse information about the basic aspects of our woodlands, such as the area occupied, forest zones without trees, the name of each specie that we have, their diametric distribution, the growth per hectare of the different species and many other things.
Comparison of the data allows us to conjecture that they got it right when the data coincides but perplexes us when we come across a discrepancy. Fortunately, when the tree covered area, the strictly forest area, in Catalonia is calculated there is largely agreement between the two inventories and other information sources and it seems unquestionable that in 1993 we had a tree covered area between the 13,321 Km2 of the CREAF study and the 13,941 Km2 of the “National Forest Inventory”. We say we had because after the forest fires of 1994 and 1998 we have to deduct, without our pulse trembling, the 1,000 Km2 burnt in those years. In addition, we can state, without being mistaken, that this forest area, which is 40% of the total of the country, turns us into a 100% forestry country being above the percentages of the European Union (34.6%) and the total of all Spain (32%).
Even more so if we add the land legally considered to be forest but without trees, either because they are covered with bushes or are natural meadows or burnt land not reforested, the percentage in Catalonia rises to 62%.
We have a lot of woodlands and this fact has caused concern in high places. Concern also arises about the uncontrolled way that trees are today covering the abandoned arable and pasture land, everything is being recovered, it is worth saying, that was forest before the arrival of the plough. The cattle or the sheep were sent to the most inhospitable areas. But in favour of the woods we have to say that they cannot defend themselves alone against the excesses they are accused of. One only needs to make a trip through the regions of Tarragona, Garraf, the Llobregat basin, l´Empordà or the regions burnt in 1994 and 1998 to see that this is not serious and that in extensive parts of the country there are few probabilities that the woodlands will cause a collapse.

The damned tree

After the previous clarification and continuing with the inventories, we find that in Catalonia conifer woods, basically pines, predominate and which represent nearly two thirds of our woodlands. The evergreens: the holm oaks, oaks and others are less present in our days but are compensated by having greater prestige. A comparison, which we do not agree with, made by certain naturalists that the broad leave trees represent the aristocracy and the nobility where as those with pointed and thin leaves are the serfs, the demons and the hoi polloi.
Of all the species of trees, the most abundant, occupying the most area (346,500 hectares) and having the purest name is a pine tree which is one hundred per cent Mediterranean: the Aleppo pine. This modest tree grows in the most inhospitable places and, without any obligation, makes the land green where fire, bad agricultural practices, drought or any kind of land slip has destroyed all the vegetation. Apparently, for its kind nature and vitality ought to be admired and blessed but, quite to the contrary, it is a tree that is ridiculed and slandered by most people. Some ungrateful people, who knows when, called it a sterile pine and some university professors treat it as Lucifer. The words of M. Costa i Llobera who admired it in Formentor has served for nothing:

My heart loves a tree! Older than an olive tree,
more powerful than the oak, greener than the orange tree,
keeps its leaves for spring eternal,
and battles the winds which beat the coast,
like a gigantic warrior
…
Oh sublime tree! The living image of genius:
dominates the mountains and looks to the infinite;
for it the ground is harsh, but kisses its foliage
the sky that loves it, and has the lightning and the wind
for glory and delight

Oh! Yes: that when wildly howl the winds
and it seems to enter the spume which tumbles its foothold,
then it laughs and sings stronger than the waves,
and as winner shakes off the clouds from its
royal mane

Hate has overcome good sense and some of the phytosociologist botanists do not consider that it merits the distinguished title of Aleppo pine and they have deported it, the inquisitors, to the field of rehabilitation for noxious species which they have called “brolla arbrada” (undergrowth trees).
So we have many woods and many pines, but as we will discover, in a moment, the woodlands that we walk in are adorned with many virtues and a long history but they give their fruits little by little.
Again according to the inventories, the trees in the Catalan woodlands are 85.5 million m3 which is the equivalent of an average per hectare of 61.5 m3, a value very far from that of the Northern woodlands as the average in the European Union is 122.9 m3/ha. The light, the shapes and the colours are disproportionate in the Mediterranean but against this it rains very little in a large part of the country (less than 600 mm per year), the topography is rough and the soil thin. Therefore, according to the previous figures, there is no doubt that whilst the tree covered area percentage in Catalonia is one of the highest in Europe, the stocks of timber are among the poorest.

Harvesting and planting

This scarcity is also patent when we look at the growth of these woods. The average growth, which is usually measured in cubic metres per hectare and year, is very low and is around 2.27 m3/ha/year. In areas where the rainfall is greater than 600 mm. per year the average can reach 3.58 m3/ha/year but in dry areas the average is around 1.09 m3/ha/year. If we compare this with the growth achieved in the Amazonian forestry plantations or with Galicia and the Basque country we are amazed. In the trials carried out in the controversial project on the river Jari, in the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon eucalyptus trees have reached a growth of 50 m3/ha/year and what is more, the plantations have achieved this in only 6 years. That is to say in seven years the growth nearly doubles that produced in a hectare in Catalonia in sixty.
In the Basque country and in Galicia the numbers are not as spectacular but they still easily exceed a dozen cubic metres a year. One does not have to be an expert to notice that these data do not make it precisely easy for the Catalan woodlands to compete in the international market.
We say plantations but quietly so that nobody gets alarmed as it is well known that to certain chosen and influential spirits the words plantation and felling produce a deep panic. These citizens believe that the only correct timber management systems is a tree here and a tree there as if to get a sack of wheat we harvest an ear in one place and another elsewhere.
We well know as the anthropologists have explained that as the needs of society increase hunting and gathering are abandoned for agriculture and livestock. We also know that the Chardonay vines are often used instead of the Garnatxa or the Ull de Liebre and everyone drinks the wine they give without any problem. However, when we talk about more intensive management of the woods or even worse the introduction of a fast growing species, the row that occurs is so great that one can hardly mention the subject.
Things are so and knowing the little enthusiasm that we have for being martyrs, this does not seem to be the right moment to argue about these matters. Really there is no point worrying about it as sooner or later the pressure from business will bring it to the surface in all its complexity.
Nevertheless, and in honour of the truth, we have to report that in accordance with the magnificent study from Adriano Raddi, The market for forestry products in Catalonia (the first work of some depth on the sector and supplied many of the data used here) the rapid growth species (the poplar, the Californian pine, the eucalyptus and the Douglas fir) represent 1.55% of the Catalan woodlands and that their production is 15% of the timber used in the country.

Production and consumption

Continuing with our initial idea to talk about woodlands and business now is the time to ask ourselves what is the use of the timber in our forests. In Catalonia almost a million cubic metres of timber are used each year and its distribution is: 40% to the saw mills, 31% for the sawdust industry and the rest is used as firewood.
But, beware, the consumption of logs is more than 2,800,000 m3 with a negative balance of almost 1,800,000 m3. That is to say year after year much more timber is consumed than is produced.
The initial processing industry which deals with the major part of the local production consists of: a) for plank making with one company that has most of the production and b) to the sawmills, principally for the production of pallets, where the requirements to centralise the production in very large sawmills has reduced the field only a short time ago and where there is one company which is well known for its large annual production. Among the industries which use semifinished products, the best known is the furniture industry which in Catalonia represents 17% of the industry in Spain. Paper made from wood, which used to be important, has totally disappeared (without this in fact having caused any apparent concern in the sector to judge from the lack of reaction which occurred when the two most important paper mills  were closed not many years ago). Thus buyers of “timber raw material” are few and the market is strongly influenced by the decisions of two important companies.
The analysis of the history of the prices of 8 species of conifers, ten species of evergreens and 11 forestry products, made by Raddi, shows a generalised descent of real prices. From 1959 and coinciding with the end of the first period of the late dictatorship, prices started to go down up to the end of the sixties when they were regularised. Currently, the price paid in Catalonia for timber is still considered too high by the industry and accordingly an increase in real timber prices is not expected in the immediate future.
The panorama does not seem too good for timber producers, but we can ask ourselves is timber the only business to be got out of the woodlands? No is our immediate answer, as the woodlands provide other profit sources such as hunting, wild mushroom gathering or leisure which are not to be depreciated as we will see and other indirect profit sources such as tourism or soil protection and water planning which for some years various economists and land owners have been fighting to get permission to charge for.
How much money is moved by all the direct profits that we have commented on? To find out we have to rely on official statistics which, whilst not brilliant, are the only ones we have. In the last few years Catalan timber production is around 8,797 million Pesetas per year split up in a rather surprising manner. Timber represents 30% of this figure, hunting and fishing 22%, firewood 5%, cork 2% and finally, to everyone’s surprise, the other forest products (wild mushrooms, truffles and wild fruits) 40%. Probably this 40% arises out of the sale of wild mushrooms in Mercabarna and other central markets and is a bright light in the darkness of possible forest profit sources.
If we compare this almost 9,000 million with the 4 billion that arise only from the exports from Catalonia in 1998, we will notice that our woodlands occupy a lot of space but produce little profit.
By comparing figures it is not difficult to discover how much timber and firewood bring to their producers: some 2,700 million Pesetas per year which represents an average of 2,663 Pesetas per m3. This means in round figures that if you have an estate of 100 ha in the least productive area of the country, the income from your property will be around 270,000 Pesetas annually (much less than one sole hectare of arable land) and if you have it in one of the most productive areas the income could reach 930,000 Pesetas per annum. All these figures are before paying taxes and general expenses.

Forest owners

Once we have exposed the first difficulties about forest business, we will explore, as simply as we can, another basic aspect of the woodlands and the business connected with it: the ownership of forest.
We do not have a definitive study as to the distribution of the ownership between public institutions and private individuals nor information from the cadaster. It is difficult to rely on the inventory because, for example, the amount of public property does not include the land owned by many town halls or other municipal type institutions among whom are some of the most important public property owners. Maybe the work that has the most interest is the study The structure of forest ownership in Catalonia by Ignasi Aldomà Buixadé who analyses the different aspect of estates from the agricultural census of 1989. Whilst it is impossible to summarise in a few words the complexity of Catalan forest ownership, we will give, with great caution, some data from that study which we believe are significant.
In Catalonia there are at least 50,000 forest owners. A first question about this number, is it many or is it few? If we compare it with zones culturally connected to us like the south of France it is few, but if we look at it from the point of view of management, which is what interests us, it is many as the diversity of interests, size, income, capitalisation or ownership of these estates creates an heterogeneous group which is difficult to group together in order to analyse the future of their woodlands and businesses and for the creation of new financial expectations.
Aldomà states, using the census, that the public institutions are the owners of 28% of the Catalan woodlands whilst the remaining 72% is in private hands. 60.5% of forest businesses are less than 5 ha in size, 36% are between 5 ha and 150 ha and only 3.5% have more than 150 ha. The latter, amongst which are those of public property, take up 60% of the woodlands, as per the census, and are principally in the Pyrenean regions where it is obvious that the forest is the principal feature. The minimum forest unit of 25 ha, which has been the norm these last years in the forest policy of the country and has recently been modified, has excluded from many decisions some 84.6% of Catalan woodlands which do not reach that area.
Another characteristic of ownership which we believe to be more important than the variety is the low income, already mentioned, which makes them not viable from a traditional forest business point of view. We have a structure arising from a long historical process which had its financial logic but no longer corresponds to either the markets or current forms of management.
The consequence of this situation is simple. All those owners who by exercising their rights want to revalue low or nil income forest look for a change of use which would increase productivity, income or the capital value of their land. When there are no possibilities to make changes and the financial situation of the owner does not permit him to invest in his property, the forest is abandoned. In this sense the woodlands of the metropolitan areas and the more tourist zones, with or without trees, are those with the greater hurry to enter into the real estate market and consequently are those who incorporate the large processes of change of use and of the landscape with greater facility.

Conservation

These transformations when not made in an orderly fashion produce a panorama which for many citizens is depressing and for many others, like the buyers of plots in urbanisations in forest areas, is pleasing or results in indifference.
At the end of the sixties groups concerned about the anarchic changes to woodlands and landscapes started to gain influence and their arguments for a better management of the land slowly achieved majority social recognition.
This interest to safeguard the woodlands was not led by the Forestry Department or forest owners. They were university professors, urban planners and private entities, such as ramblers’ associations and others who started campaigns, public meetings and debates. The Forestry Department at that time, particularly Jacobin and distant, did not understand the current social change and their lack of protagonism and, at times, their obstructionist attitude cost them a lot and for which they are still paying.
According to the defensive tradition which the creators of the first American National Parks used who were very conservationist at that time, limited their proposals to the strict protection of certain features of the country which we have to admit was the most plausible action to take. Protection was understood to mean isolating Nature from mankind. The projects had three principal bases:
• An idealised definition, conceived solely as perfect and a balance without mankind
• An overvaluation of certain elements: a selection of trees, a bird colony or a lepidopteran and
• A patent lack of confidence in the common people and their institutions which had to be expressed by the creation of specific government bodies by specialists.
In fact this model is that of pure and tough governmental intervention which Spain invented to create Doñana on an old hunting ground which for this precise reason had not been drained. The application of these ideas to Sant Llorenç de Munt and Montseny were too quickly applied and which we could called the mother of all problems which was no other than the fact that the woodlands which they wanted to use to avoid them being turned into private estates and, thus, would have to respect above all the rights that the law would give their owners.
As forestry legislation, blind to these problems, has no practical solution, recourse had to be made to the land legislation which governs the use of property in respect to general interest, especially in the right to build which is not inherent in the property but is a right granted by the planning authorities. While these protection systems, with strict building regulations, placed no impediment on the traditional agricultural and forestry uses it could be seen immediately that many forest owners with unprofitable estates, who seeing that their properties were excluded from the property market, specially in expanding metropolitan areas, did not precisely welcome these social initiatives and the business difficulties of many estates, which we have previously described, continue or become worse.
Currently the situation is far from being resolved. However, three things are abundantly clear:
• To preserve a certain landscape within zones under great building pressure requires overwhelming public intervention.
• The problems of privately owned forest cry out for new solutions, and
• The effort applied to certain elements is insufficient to obtain a territory with a certain relationship between urbanised and non-urbanised areas which respond to the quality pattern that we would like to give them
With all this information it would seem that the country had more than sufficient material to reflect upon and to find original solutions, which emphasised not on the immobilisation of the territory, which is only possible in reduced areas and with a high social energy cost, but on change which, as we all know, occurs every day and will continue to do so whilst we still have life in us.
But, we are not paying attention to our experiences, whether guided by dogmatic reductionists on conservation problems, or fascinated by the lyricalness of our phytosociologists ( who, by the way, have classified the vegetation of the country into unusual categories). The fact is that we have decided to establish 140 special areas, called PEIN, as cornerstone to organise and manage our countryside, abandoning with some cowardice, a less defensive and more global attitude for which, without doubt, we are not mature enough.
Time will show us that this so unambitious option will be erroneous. The plan has hardly been developed. It has not been able to solve the mother of all the problems : business and forest ownership. Nor has it been useful in managing the transformation of the major part of the territory and, further, the instruments invented to apply it, alongside the land legislation, have not been able to consolidate its special aspects. And all this fuss, say some analysts, for only 20% of the forest area.

The new forestry policy

Up to here we have hastily dealt with some of the factors which make the timber businesses difficult and which affect its present and future. Farther on we will review some of the solutions we have used to improve properties, companies and business.
When the Autonomous Government was restored and on Catalonia receiving the major part of the political and administrative functions connected to forestry, the Catalan administration found itself with an extraordinarily centralised administrative organisation, heavily orientated to woodlands in public ownership, a significant lack of experience with respect to private woodlands, legal procedures basically directed to public forest and a sector that, in addition to the characteristics already described, did not have a high technological level, technical training and advanced professional management, nor with institutions related to teaching, research and marketing.
One of the first things done to improve the situation was to set up, via a forestry law, new regulations and planning and management instruments adapted to the Catalan reality. The Catalan Law introduced five new items related to the law existing at that time:
• The recognition of all owners, whether public or private, of the right to manage their own properties. This gave the Town Halls the possibility of being in charge independently of the Forestry Administration of their woodlands declared to be for use by the public, including functions exclusive to the State.
• The creation of new planning instruments for both the general policies of the sector as well as for the organisation of forest estates.
• The establishment of procedures for co-ordinating with  the territorial planning, principally the Ground Law.
• The creation of new bodies and tools to manage private woodlands, such as the Centre de la Propietat Forestal or the Fons Forestal de Catalunya.
• The creation Forestry Protection Units to improve the prevention and extinction of forest fires.
To this legislative task were progressively added new institutions related to the woodlands. From having practically nothing, in less than twenty years the country now has two research centres (CREAF and the Technological Centre of Solsonès), a forestry training school in Santa Coloma de Farners, a Technical University School in Lleida, a specialised public company (Forestal Catalana, S.A.), various administrative units specialising in managing protected areas and forest fire prevention, numerous nature parks and protected areas, new bodies of experts coming from traditional degree courses and from those newly created, a forestry bureau and many other things.
From what we have just commentated, we can only say that in the last twenty years there have been spectacular changes and while not all have produced what was expected from them, it is true to say that we are in a position where all these innovations fructify and give us solutions to some of the problems that we have seen and to others that we will now see.

Estate by estate

Returning to our theme of woodlands and business, we will say, as I said above, that the law has established regulations in a very general form and it remains for the government to draw up the content of the majority of these ideas. On starting to set up bodies and instruments, the government found itself with the lack of tradition and experience in the management of private woodlands which, as we have shown in this paper, have a very delicate health in many aspects.
To deal with these shortcomings we made use of the experience of the neighbouring countries to the North who have are some years more advanced in dealing with private woodlands. In those countries the promotion, regulations, planning, taxes, etc. are mostly done estate by estate. The property was a productive unit just like a family farm, a shop or rented apartments. Here at home, the few existing owners syndicates and the professional in the sector were also productive. In accordance with these criteria the Centre de Propietat Forestal (CPF) supplied the technical management plans, tax benefits to owners and a large part of the help programmes to the traditional timber businesses (logical logging and the sale of the timber or firewood). The body adopted the French model of a public corporation, chamber of commerce style, with the objective of protecting and promoting the interests of forest owners.
The process we have summarised is logical and ties in with our culture. Almost ten years have gone by since the start of this initiative so important for the management of our woodlands and we can, and ought, to draw up the first accounts.
Since its creation, twenty years ago, some 1,200 owners out of the 50,000 in the country have joined the CPF. These owners, per official data, have a total of 250,000 ha, that is to say 11.5% of the Catalan forest area. How can we interpret these data? As we understand it, the CPF has been useful to those estates with a certain profitability as there was direct timber business, but has not been able to attract in any way the majority of Catalan owners who have not very profitable estates. The result of these important figures seems to indicate that the public effort, both technical and financial, has been concentrated on the more profitable estates and a large part of the woodlands have been excluded from the subventions and aid to the private estates.
The promotion of individual management, which characterises the CPF, does not seem to be the most appropriate to deal with the existing financial problems, that we have already talked about, such as the need for territorial planning to deal with such problems as forest conservation and the prevention and fighting of forest fires. Here is an illustrative fact: among the 350 owners affected by the forest fires in Central Catalonia in the summer of 1998, only 2% were associated to the CPF. Without doubt we can say that the structure of the CPF deprives it of the special view of the territorial view of the woodlands and this is negative for the woodlands that are not profitable.
All this has been learnt in these last years and it seems that the results mentioned should encourage complementing that done up till now with new instruments and some changes in orientation. However, not everyone thinks the same. The drafting by the government of a new project for the organisation of the CPF in order to satisfy the requests for a new private woodlands Agency as a result of pressure groups, carries on with the original model and, in our opinion based on the data commented, should this be approved it will not solve the problems that have been raised in this paper.

Public money

The previous data and results which show that the cost of carrying out a forestry policy with a territorial view leaves one thing clear: without public money, or better said, without increasing and better using the current public expenditure, the majority of the Catalan woodlands cannot and will not be able to resolve their current problems.
Logically, this requirement to increase public expenditure is unanimously defended by a good number of forest owners, both public and private. The significance of having to increase the money from the people for the woodlands is very amusing. For some owners and ecologists, the fact of owning a wood implies giving an ecological service to society and solely for that they have to be paid. In this case it would be that society pays an annual tax to each forest estate for the supply of such service. For others, investing public money estate by estate will not solve the problems and they are of the opinion the most important investments have to be on a territorial basis. For this group, the public investment has to be concentrated in services more or less directly related to woodlands such as, for example, network of tracks, resting places, water points or the security programmes necessary for the prevention of forest fires or also in the encouragement of estate syndicates to improve their management.
In whatever case it will be the taxpayers who will decide via their representatives as to how public money is to be distributed. This will need a lot of convincing by the whole of the industry that this option favours society in general. The routes taken to seduce and convince the taxpayer do not seem to be the most appropriate. The law of the right to roam, to mention one case, is more concerned with overseeing and controlling the visitor, who pays the taxes, than to guarantee his right to walk over and get to know the country. A group of mayors from the Pyrenees, to quote another case, are thinking of charging users of the public woodlands, thus opening the possibility for comes from the all private owners to do the same. Good forest strategies to get the money that comes from the general public!
There is some confusion and a lack of debate, but one thing that has to be resolved and has to influence our decisions about the woodlands with respect to public money. Everybody has to be aware that society has to discuss and solve what has to be the relationship between private and public interests so that everyone is clear about what the Catalan woodlands have to offer the country and society has to consider whether it is appropriate to invest more or less public money in the woodlands.
The improvements and reforms to be introduced to the current regulations, institutions and instruments to solve the problem of the bad business that id today the Catalan woodlands and the ability that we have to establish compromises between general and private interests which could be a territorial bringing together of the woodlands are the conditions, as we understand them, that will determine in future years the amount of public money for our woodlands and thus their quality and profitability •
 
 

The forestry policy in the Autonomous Community of Valencia
Antoni Escarré
Department of Ecology, University of Alicante

More than half of the land within the Autonomous Community of Valencia is covered by forest. Suitable management and control of these lands depends, on the one hand, on the conservation of this natural heritage and defence against soil erosion, and on the other, on the social-economic development of the rural areas. A journey through the history of forest policies, together with consideration of the climatic and orographic conditions of the area will provide an outline of the challenges that modern forestry management must face and this is to view the forest as something much more than a mere collection of trees.
 

Forest management in the Mediterranean area is always more complex than that of central and northern Europe, where forest are more profitable and are also more appreciated in their more traditional function, that of wood production. The specific nature of the Mediterranean type of environment is not always recognised and hardly any of the attempts to extend exploitation practices of the more productive northern latitude forest to this geographic area have produced good results.

The Mediterranean forest: a management issue fraught with problems

There are many reasons for the problems attached to the management of Mediterranean forest. This list is headed by the climatic conditions, especially the lack of rainfall during the summer period, which limit production capacity. The growth rates of most tree species to be found in the Mediterranean forests and woods are low and hence, the economic profitability of the direct exploitation of the wood production is also low. This lack of economic value of many of the Mediterranean ecosystems normally goes hand-in-hand with a similar low level of social appreciation that has produced a notable degradation of the covering vegetation through many generations.
Throughout history, these areas have suffered from numerous forms of pressure that have had highly negative effects on the forest. The first was the excessive and unsuitable exploitation of the resources themselves, and in addition, both agriculture and animal farming have provided very strong competition for the forest use of the region since ancient times. The burning of forests and woods in order to obtain land for crop rotation or for pastures are still traditional practices in the Mediterranean area. Consequently, the passage of recurrent flames is still leaving its mark on the landscape. A more recent negative factor, above all in coastal areas, is the considerable pressure provoked by urban projects that are occupying wooded areas, making the already difficult task of forest management even more so.

Forest management in Valencia

It was towards the end of the eighteenth century when the botanist, Cavanilles first warned the public authorities that the forest in the Valencia Community was undergoing a serious process of deforestation. An attempt to solve the problem by a process of disentailment, which caused the ownership of the lands to pass into private hands, was made. This was not, however, very successful, since the indiscriminate cutting down of trees occurred on many occasions.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Forest Act (1863) and the Improvement and Reforestation of Public Forest Excepted from Disentailment Act (1877) were passed. These acts permitted the consolidation of public forest property and forest restoration. When drawing up the latter, the consequences of the Júcar flood that took place in the Autonomous Community of Valencia during November of 1864 and which was the driving force behind the reforestation project. The Reforestation Commissions were created in 1888, and these began to take the ecological function of woodlands that were not included in the catalogue and their indirect benefits into consideration. The Reforestation Commission worked in preference along the slopes of the River Júcar and after the success obtained with the sand dunes at Guadamar del Segura in Alicante, also showed a marked preference for other heavily degraded basins.
It was during the first quarter of the twentieth century that two pieces of state legislation had the greatest impact on this area. On the one hand, there was the act that allowed the Administration to declare forest areas as protected zones, independently of their ownership, and on the other was the creation of the State Forest Heritage. In 1938, after the Civil War, a General Plan for Forest reforestation in Spain was drawn up. The intention of this Plan was to maximise production and to increase the areas of highland wooded areas by reforestation, forestry treatment and private interest. These goals were achieved with the directives of the 1941 State Forest Heritage Act. A total of 15,865 hectares were reforested in the Autonomous Community of Valencia during the years 1940 and 1949 and a further total of 52,221 hectares was achieved during the period of greatest impetus, that of 1950 to 1970. The Spanish Forest Administration was restructured in 1971 and the Instituto Nacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (ICONA) (National Institute for Nature Conservation) was created, which has competence in the General Office for Forest, Hunting and River Fishing. It concentrated the reforestation work and in only ten years, between 1970 and 1980, reforested 51,027 hectares.

The Forest Act
The Valencia Forest Act was approved by the Valencia Courts on the 9th of December 1993 (No. 3/1993). The Introduction clearly established three types of functions for the forest resources. These are, the actual ecological resources, the recreational and the cultural resources and the direct production of tangible products. Even a superficial review of the objectives of this Act will reveal a clear desire to reconcile the various social demands that are placed on the use of forest areas.
Among the more noteworthy aspects of this legislation, mention must be given of the positive conception of cataloguing forest or forests, which are based on the classification of the territorial areas. This system avoids the often-used classification of forest in the situation where all other possible uses have been previously discounted. In addition, the State Act adds those types of land that comply or could comply with ecological, landscape or recreational functions to the traditional concept of forest. This concept is an improvement, as far as that contained in Article 45 of the Constitution is concerned, since it takes into account environmental aspects in addition to those of production.
An extremely important idea for forest management is also introduced by this legislation – the recognition of ecosystems that must be treated as a whole. The factors within the physical medium and the communities of organisms that populate it form a complete system, so that any action that affects one of the components could have repercussions on some or all of the others. This presupposes respect, not only towards the organisms that make up an ecosystem, in order to conserve their bio-diversity, but also towards the processes that occur within this ecosystem. Based on this the following objectives of the Act may therefore, be included among those of a more marked ecological character:
• The evaluation of bushy scrub as stages within the development of an ecosystem that could eventually lead to the formation of forest.
• The maintenance, protection and enlargement of the vegetation covering to provide the greatest possible number of layers in order to counteract erosive processes and regulate hydrological flow.
• The preservation of the species of specific individuals, vegetation formations or animal communities with high ecological value.
• The creation of peripheral protection zones around those natural areas with greatest risk of degradation, dedicated to recreational aspects.
Although the Act recognises the fact that the environment places limits on the forest production within a territory, the following objectives have been declared in relation to it:
• The delimitation of those areas with greatest forest interest in order to encourage their production capacity within the framework of sustainable exploitation.
• The harmonisation between the improvement of forest exploitation and other developments, such as hunting and animal farming, among others.
• The improvement of the processes for obtaining and marketing forest products.
In addition, the main concerns within the social aspect are included in this legislation, so that they are seeking to:
• Foster forest as a first class cultural reference, which, in turn, will favour its recovery and the maintenance of the native species.
• To encourage citizen participation, especially those of rural areas, in the maintenance of enlargement of forest resources.
• To foster the use of forest by ramblers and hikers, and of its recreational and teaching possibilities, together with the awakening of the cultural, ecological and environmental values that make up the forest heritage.
• The planning and co-ordination of the various administrations involved in the prevention and extinction of forest fires.
• The promotion of research and training within the areas of forest science and technology.

Forest ecological functions

Water and hydrological regulation
At the beginning of this century, in the United States, arguments took place between civil and military engineers as to role played by forest in the maintenance of hydrological balance and more specifically in the production of run-off. The former held that the existence of a covering of trees would tend to reduce the run-off flow in the hydrological basins, whereas the latter maintained a completely contrary view. The birth of experimental research into forest hydrology was not alien to this argument. Experiments into the capacity of tens if not hundreds of hectares of basins eventually demonstrated that the civil engineers were right. The deforestation of a basin would, in the vast majority of cases, an increase in the run-off flow rates.
It is also quite evident that plants consume large amounts of the ground water reserves, by the so-called process of transpiration, which is the total amount of water, in the form of water vapour, that is returned to the atmosphere by a given ground surface area. This transpiration component is greater when a normally developed ground coverage of vegetation exists. On the other hand, when a basin is experimentally deforested, the spate peaks are magnified. The presence of forest will vary the rhythm and distribution of the rainwater flow that reaches the ground, it reduces the mechanical impact of rainfall and redistributes it and it also completely intercepts and diverts a small percentage. By slowing down the process whereby the water reaches the ground, its infiltration possibilities are improved. In addition, the tree branches cause the water to converge and become concentrated at the bases of the trunks, where it appears that this water penetrates more easily due to the pore systems associated with the root structures.
There is no longer any doubt that the woodlands, to a large extent, control the return of water to the atmosphere and produce a more regular flow that is less dependent on physical environmental factors. Popular folklore has always emphasised the power of woodlands to attract the rain. On a grander scale, the ability of forest to generate increases in the humidity levels that can result in precipitation in the form of rain is quite clear. Therefore, when contemplating forest areas of thousands of square kilometres, the arguments put forward by the military engineers were not so far out of place. In the Amazon area, for example, a large percentage of the rainfall is produced by the very transpiration of the jungles.

Protection against erosion
A covering of vegetation over the ground will protect the underlying soil from being blown or washed away by air or water currents. Rainfalls with the greatest intensity are the ones that cause the heaviest rates of erosion because the direct impact on the bare wet ground removes the soil’s surface layer particles. In addition, since the infiltration capacity is exceeded, they also provoke the heaviest run-off flows. The experiment carried out in the United States, which lead to the so-called Universal Soil Loss Equation, drew attention to the importance of plantations for minimising soil erosion. However, soil protection does not seem to be the exclusive domain of forest, since thickets and bush coverings and even prairies and meadows are capable of preventing the production and transport of sediment.

Atmosphere purification
It has been known for a long time that forest possesses an enormous capacity for oxygenating the atmosphere and also the benefits, as reported by patients with breathing difficulties, during stays in forest areas. There is also recently awakened interest in forest and other type of vegetation as possible sinks for the excess carbon dioxide that modern industrialised societies produce through the burning of fossil fuels. The possible repercussions that massive reforestation could have on atmospheric purification is a current theme for discussion. The type of forest management that would be required in order to achieve maximum capture of carbon dioxide still has to be defined. Along these lines, a very important factor is to evaluate the soil capacity to incorporate carbon in organic material form, which is difficult to metabolise.

The exploitation of forest resources

Society’s economic and cultural development has been the cause of change in the way that forest resources are used and this requires a policy that will lead to a reconciliation between the demands and the resources’ capacity for sustained production. The Valencia Community society, with its post-industrial development is demanding that the exploitation of the forest resources is mediated by ecological and social factors.
According to the Forest Act, it is the Autonomous Government of Valencia that is to manage all forest areas and their natural resources, independently of ownership, and to guarantee sustainable exploitation. The Administration has to count and describe all the forest resources in a Forest Inventory and then subject this inventory to a General Plan of Order. This directives of this Plan should contain the necessary action to foster research, social and recreational use and the implantation of primary transformation industries. It also has the power to mark out forest borders in order to limit areas of operations to homogeneous zones, with the prior authorisation of the owner. Moreover, the Administration is empowered to declare specific heavily degraded areas or those in danger, as Zones for Urgent Action (ZAU) by Decree from the Valencia Government. These areas will require the implantation of works for the conservation, use and protection that will make good any deficiencies and ban incompatible exploitation. The owners of those forest areas that do not have any forest management and Improvement Programme may also develop their own Operational Projects, but these will require prior authorisation before putting them into operation. There are certain specific actions that are not included in the project. These are the collection of conifer firewood and that proceeding form cleaning and pruning operations for domestic use, together with the collection of fruit, plants and mushrooms as authorised by the owner and which only requires a simple communication.
The exploitation of forest areas through the Forest Projects will be carried out according to its directives. The administration will only authorise tree-cutting where the trees have died through natural causes, the cutting is necessary for the improvement of ecosystems, phytological protection or the protection of authorised works and the establishment of fire breaks or protection corridors. Any break-up of the land requires authorisation and any extraction activity or open air quarrying will also require a prior undertaking for reconstruction and forest reforestation. The exploitation for pasture purposes will only be allowed when the ground is not damaged and there is not danger to the ecosystem. In addition, public owners have the obligation to invest 15% of the proceedings from exploitation in the ordering and improvement of the forest mass. This amount may be increased by agreement with the Valencia Government in those areas that require higher levels of improvement.

Landscape and recreation

It should not be forgotten that one of the social demands placed on forest resources is that of recreation and scenic routes. The Forest Act attempts to make the right to enjoy the woodlands as a pastime with that of economics by guaranteeing that there will be neither an irrational exploitation nor an excessive protectionism of the forest resources.
In addition to the production aspects, the Act also takes those of the environment into consideration and therefore includes woodlands and areas of land that may be appreciated for scenic routes or recreation in the cataloguing operation. It has the intention of encouraging both the recreational and educational use of the forest areas and to this end is planning the participation of the citizens themselves in forest maintenance and enlargement. The Administration regulates these recreational and scenic route activities and attempts to maintain the various uses in harmony with each other. For this reason, the transit of people and vehicles may be restricted in certain areas and campsites would require the owner’s authorisation. Together with that of the relevant competent body. Moreover, any motorised activity is prohibited except on authorised circuits, in addition to any other noise-producing activities that could alter the habitats of the flora and fauna.

The world of the countryside versus that of the town and city

The respect given to the forest by the rural Mediterranean population has traditionally always been in function of the benefits it provides. Some of the community forest areas in the province of Soria are given as an example of interest and good management by all the local inhabitants because of the benefits they provide. In general, however, the forest has only been maintained in those areas where there was no other possibility of more profitable use of the ground.
It is a curious fact that the accelerated depopulation drift from the land that has been suffered by the Mediterranean rural areas in the last decades is often cited as one of the causes of the degradation of its ecosystems. It is perfectly true that our ancestors have left behind a highly human-dependant landscape that requires a certain management for its continuation. It is also true that they have had to accept the main responsibility for the protection of areas where they attempted to ban all forms of exploitation in the protected areas without realising that this was to produce important changes within the community of organisms living there.
There is no doubt that the movement of a large proportion of people from the rural populations to the towns and cities has had a negative effect on the agricultural landscapes. Abandoned cultivated fields and pastures quickly become invaded by undergrowth, just as happens in natural and reforested forest when they are no longer exploited. Nevertheless, in a strict ecological evaluation, this abandoning of the rural areas should be considered as a positive benefit since it allows a reconstruction of a more complex and varied vegetation than that previously cultivated. The strong power of attraction wielded by the towns and cities was very noticeably in the Valencia Community, just as the rest of Spain, especially during the 60s. City life still possesses greater attraction than country life, however, the distribution between the two areas is better balanced. Even so, it has been calculated that in the year 2020, around 77% of the population will be living in the cities. The drift from country life is a problem that the EU is worried about and is attempting to find the means that guarantee the best levels of quality of life.
The greater part of the Valencia Community population is distributed in the cities or in the metropolitan areas of the coastal plain. It is possible to distinguish two populations in any of the valleys that run perpendicular to the coast, one on the coastal plain that is mainly urban and another on the interior highlands that is basically rural. As far as the idea of forest heritage is concerned, as established by the Act, it would be logical to think that the rural population would be responsible for its safeguarding, while the urban population would have the right to enjoy it. However, it must be remembered that along general lines, it is quite clear that compliance with forest ecological functions is made at the cost of having to renounce certain exploitations with greater profitability. The maintenance of the basin headland ought to have some price paid by the inhabitants of the lower regions in order to compensate this effort for the conservation of resources, which otherwise would fall exclusively on the less prosperous rural economy.

Forest fires

It is a strange fact that the one time when forest plays a major role in importance is precisely when it is being destroyed by fire. It has to be admitted that the capacity of fire to consume all that lies in its path cannot be controlled with absolute certainty by any of the fire-fighting procedures that have been developed to date. The greater part of control is lost in extensive forest fires and society has to face up to the fact that it is unable to dominate a natural process because of its magnitude. There is no other course open but to admit that the power behind the forces produced by a forest fire, just as in an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, exceeds all possibilities of current technology. A technology that can divert rivers and even move mountains, but at a rate that is more in agreement with the difference between our own body size and the scale of the transformation.
It is my view that this uncontrollable character of forest fires must be taken into consideration when designing a policy for prevention and extinction. ICONA has transferred its competence in forest policy to the local governments and these have made enormous efforts to improve the annual data concerning the surface areas destroyed by fires. Sometimes, the success achieved with certain measures used in the fight against forest fires has given those responsible the false idea that the definitive solution to the problem was always at hand. Good years have been registered, even very good years and very successful periods, but, sooner or later, critical conditions return everywhere.

Social and climatic component
It is my belief that the majority of people believe that forest fires are, above all, a political problem and that the solution also lies along this path. Here is where the great interest produced by the social viewpoint of forest fires should be emphasised. It is sufficient, for example, to take note of the large number of reasons that certain persons may have had for provoking fires in the forest according to the vox populi.
Among these mentioned motives, some, such as obtaining pasture land, town planning interests, the reduction in the price of wood, are the ones that are repeated with greatest frequency. Unhappiness with the distribution of an inheritance, fear at losing employment involved precisely in fire-fighting and pure spite are some of the other causes that have provoked fires on occasion. There is even the investigation carried out in the Valencia region that revealed a significantly larger number of fires occurred during post-election periods than at other times. Therefore, according to this latter information, there could be some truth behind the political qualification of the problem.
However, this continuous search for pyromaniacs and reasons to justify the provocation of forest fires can be included within this environment of catastrophe that is so popular in much of the media. They appear to compete with each other in order to show the most desolate images possible of the areas through which the flames have passed. Nevertheless, they hardly ever show the same areas a certain time after, when the vegetation has regenerated itself, and when it is extremely difficult or even impossible to say exactly which area had been devastated by the fire.
When attempting to analyse the forest fires in the Autonomous Community of Valencia, it is necessary to accept a certain social component that is linked to all management or recreational practices that are potential causes of fire. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge climatic conditions, such as drought, high summer temperatures and strong western winds are the truly determining factors, especially in the production of those extensive fires that represent the greater percentage of burnt surface area.
Prevention and extinction methods
It is quite evident that the Mediterranean forest requires a certain amount of preventative management to remove the excess of burnable material that accumulates year after year. However, the lack of economic production makes it difficult to have a sufficient level of investment available for prevention. In addition, social pressure on the forest fire problem normally gives priority to the use of public funds in the tasks of prevention and extinction.
The ability to detect a possible forest fire only minutes after its start is extremely important. Detection systems equipped with infrared sensors, airborne vigilance that can detect the slightest signs of smoke and the traditional watchtowers are very valuable elements within an early warning system. If this can be combined with the rapid intervention of fire-fighting teams by helicopter, then the extinction of a large proportion of forest fires can be guaranteed. Nevertheless, even though the various technologies for extinction and co-ordination are continually improving and highly detailed plans are drawn up for the prevention and control of fires, it still has to be accepted that a certain percentage will occur where control is impossible. For example, a dry storm with a strong west wind and a great deal of lightning activity that starts several fires distributed over difficult terrain. If this also occurs at night in the middle of summer, then it has a high degree of probability of becoming a fire that eventually extends over thousands of hectares.

Action after the fire
One of the more interesting results from research by the Autonomous Government Valencia into the requirements for restoring the covering of vegetation after the forest fires of 1991, was that fact that plant regeneration took place mush faster on limestone terrain than on loamy ground. The explanation for this can probably be found in the various uses the two types of land have had. In soft loamy soils, ploughing and tilling are easily carried out, and over the centuries this has eliminated all the roots of the trees and bushes that originally covered it. The limestone terrain with its outcrops of rocks appearing on the surface made agricultural exploitation very difficult in bygone times and it was able to conserve roots and rhizomes that are able to quickly provide vigorous new shoots after the fire.
The loss of nutrients when the organic material burns tends to impoverish the soil as well as leaving unprotected against erosion. The fast regeneration of the vegetation is the best solution, but it may also be necessary, in the case of steep slopes for example, to protect the soil with some form of biodegradable material, such as wood chips or sewer farm sludge. The decision of whether to remove the burnt wood or not is another problem that crops up after a fire and it is difficult to provide a generally valid solution.

The reforestation plan

In compliance with the Forest Act, the Autonomous Government of Valencia approved a Reforestation Plan for the 1994 – 1999 period, the objectives of which are to slow down erosion and the process of becoming a desert, to restore the degraded covering of vegetation, to encourage bio-diversity, to increase the area of trees, to protect hydrological resources, to protect against the risk of fire and to stimulate the economic development in rural areas. The plan consists of four programmes:
1. The restoration of the covering of vegetation
2. The forestation of agricultural lands
3. Aid for development action in forest
4. Research and development on vegetation restoration
The first of these programmes establishes a series of criteria for setting up reforestation priorities, that take into account the risk of erosion, the danger of the silting up of dams, the prevention of spate damage and the social-economic situation within the area of operation. The detailed analysis of the immediately available areas allowed maps of reforestation priorities to be drawn up for the woodlands of three Valencia provinces. Although the programme give initial preference for action on lands managed by the Autonomous Government of Valencia, they have also declared the intention to extend it to any land, no matter who owns it. A total area of 100,000 hectares is planned to be reforested during the period.
The complete development of the plan should have an effect of the monthly average employment of approximately 2,000 jobs, together with a very positive effect of areas with a very depressed economy.
The reforestation plan for agricultural land originated in EEC regulation 2080/92, which forms part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The response to this plan was very unequal throughout the Mediterranean countries. Whereas Spain incorporated it into an ambitious reforestation plan that was very respectful to the environment, with a planned investment of 1,751 million Euros. Italy, France and Greece, on the other hand, made do with modest investments of 300, 83 and 58 million Euros respectively. In the Autonomous Community of Valencia, during 1994, for example, 1,284 million Pesetas were allocated to this programme, 4,500 hectares were reforested and another 1,100 hectares of forest were treated. The original EU programme and its transfer to the Spanish and Valencia legislation have come under fire from critics because many doubts exist over the future of these plantations. There was criticism of both of the chosen species, especially in function of the subsidy’s value, and also for the use of very unsuitable agricultural techniques for the preparation of the land. The excesses of the Brussels subvention policies for inaction measures do not exactly improve the possibilities of this programme, where the final results of the plantations appear to be much less important than the economic stimulus for the change from agricultural use to that of forest.
The third of these programmes allows aid to the forest owners for ordering and exploitation, improvement and reforestation among others.
Finally, the last programme, that of research and development into the restoration of the covering of vegetation. This is considered as being especially relevant, since there is very little initiative for research into the forest problem. The responsible body for this programme is the Centre for Mediterranean Environmental studies (CEAM), an institution that was created by the Autonomous Community of Valencia as a research tool at the service of the Administration technicians. In the last seven years, CEAM, which is also responsible for problems in relation to atmospheric contamination, has achieved a structure of connections between the technicians and researchers that is very much in line with that recognised by the European Commission “V” Programme for research and investigation. This has confirmed the lack of flow of information on the results generated by European researchers to the production and management centres.
This Reforestation Plan, with which it is planned to commence a new forest policy for the Autonomous Community of Valencia, ends this year. Then will come the time to evaluate the level of compliance of the various programmes and what has been their contribution to social-economic development. The coming generations require the legacy of an important forest heritage, but above all, they need to have a new vision of the forest, less utilitarian and more capacity to recognise the daily rhythm of the life processes it contains •
 

The Valencia forest territory

The Autonomous Community of Valencia presents a very characteristic, intricate orography, with coastal plains and inland mountains ranges and plateaux, the northern one belong to the Iberian system and the southern ones to the Andalusian mountain chain.
The average rainfall over most of this region is between 300 and 600 mm. As occurs in the entire Mediterranean area, this rainfall is very unequally distributed throughout the year. Spring and especially autumn are the two seasons with most rain and summer is almost invariably very dry. The average yearly temperatures normally lie between 15 and 18ºC, with somewhat lower temperatures in the inland mountain ranges.
Between these limits of annual rainfall and temperature conditions, the net primary vegetation production lies between 0.5 and 5 tons of dry material per hectare and per year. These values come well below the figure of 9 tons per hectare per year for a northern conifer forest or the 13 tons per hectare per year for a temperate deciduous forest.
The predominant vegetation consists of several types of thicket where the following are commonly found, kermes oak, mastic tree, blackthorn, rosemary, heather and gorse. The Aleppo pine is frequently found, which normally forms more or less dense, continuous masses. Holm oak, gall oak and other types of pine represent a scare extension of the territory.
The total forest area to be found in the Valencia Community is approximately 1,200,000 hectares, which is a little more than half its surface area. Of these, only some 540,000 are actually tree covered.
60% of the forest area is in private hands. Of the remaining 40%, more than 80% is the heritage of local bodies and the rest belongs to the Autonomous Government of Valencia.
The problems of all this forest heritage come from a long history of poor resource exploitation and of invasion by agriculture and animal farming, to this must be added the difficult climatic and orographic conditions of the region where it is found. There is a general impression that this degradation process has undergone considerable acceleration during this century. This, however, is not so evident according to the data provided by a piece of interesting research in which the photographs of a series of places throughout the Valencia Community were compiled. These had been taken since the beginning of the century up to the middle of the forties. New photographs were taken with a viewpoint as close as possible to the original to show the current situation of the same places. These comparisons revealed the fact that there is no need to be so pessimistic about the today’s state of the forest areas.
There is no room for doubt that what has been accelerated, are the changes that taken place in our society during the last decades. The growth in the cities has contributed to the population drift from the rural areas. The agricultural sector has been losing its economic relevance and an awareness of environmental problems has appeared. These and many other changes that have taken place have made further thought necessary on the current significance of the forest heritage that has taken shape as more up-to-date legislation •

The indigenous population and the protection of natural areas
Josep Manuel Rueda i Torres
Director of the Ethnological Museum of Montseny (La Gabella d’Arbúcies).

The "natural area" has a confusing meaning (the human being is awarded, by means of its own actions, the classification of "natural" or "wild"). In this manner, in an attempt to protect nature, they have fallen in the paradox of constructing landscapes that happen to be extremely artificial: Indian reserves visited by ecocitizens and lived in by village urbanites. The traditional lack of the participation of the local inhabitants at the point of planning and defining protected areas, has had much to do with the development of a phenomenon that the new ecomuseums are trying to correct.
 

The French differentiate two trains of thought within the world of the protection of nature and the countryside: that of the environmentalist and the culturalist. This article, in light of the training and work place of the author, deals with the latter line, therefore, it is the vision of a museumoligist, who works in the territory of the Montseny, which has been declared a Nature Park.
In order to arrange and make this intervention possible, always and everywhere, actions carried out in the field of the protection of natural heritage and consequently the protection of the territory have been carried out without the direct participation of the implicated communities. An attitude of despotism has always prevailed, i.e. one of acting for the good of the community yet without their involvement. It is as offensive as this, especially when it comes to the taking of decisions about an area of an artificial nature prevailing to the rest of the territory, by means of the creation of the Park or other such declarations of protection. This is more than likely eased, from the moment the said protection begins to function. At this point, one begins to take the inhabitants of the protected area into account.
In fact, environmentalism, or the concern for the good conservation of the surroundings, is an old concept. Martí Boada traces it back to the era of the father of medicine, the Greek Hipocrates, even though, as the same author states, environmentalism such as we understand it today, has its own starting point in the work of Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, edited at the end of the 60's of the XX century (Boada, 1997). Later on, in the year 1970 Unesco, in a general conference launched the MAB programme (Man and Biosphere), from which the Reserve and Biosphere concept would be born, the first of which was planned for after 1976. The MAB, represented a new focus, away from the old conservationalism, and went on to take into account the role of the human being and, consequently culture, within the concept of territory protection. In this conference, the participation of local inhabitants in decisions regarding to the environment was already being discussed. MAB intended to combine the protection of the natural surroundings with a respect of those sources of territorial richness. In this conference, however there was still no mention of cultural heritage. It was not until a little later in 1972, when the Convention on the Protection of Global Cultural and Natural Heritage was held in Santiago de Chile, also organised by Unesco, that heritage was discussed in an integral manner. This change would signify an advance in the direction of taking the social surroundings of protected areas into account (Collin, 1992).
Later conferences would dig deeper into this concept: The United Nations Environmental Conference in Stockholm (1972) and particularly The United Nations Summit on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro (1992). The consolidation of this tendency stems from the hands of the Canadian government, which on the 25th June 1993, with a pioneering and brave decision, created the Ministry for Heritage that would be responsible for everything related to Canadian identity and its cultural and natural heritage. (Viel, 1997).
Similarly, in France activities for the protection of the cultural heritage linked with natural areas were set in motion, with George Henri Rivière acting as their main ideologist; we are talking about the so called ecomuseums, which had a greater proximity to the communities living in the protected areas, but we will discuss this later on.

The Integration of heritage

There is no doubt that the concern with the role of the human being and that of the community in protected natural areas, had begun to be highlighted with the introduction of the concept of integral heritage. This birth of recognition towards the countryside is, to some extent, a cultural factor, given that it is mainly fruit of the actions of human volunteers. And, in short, human actions make up that which we consider to be culture. This follows the assumption that culture and nature interact and that one without the other would not be possible in our world. In fact, in Europe we could talk of the substitution of the natural for the cultural landscape, which has occurred gradually over thousands of years. Taking the words of J. Soler "nature is the interaction between man and the natural environment; nature being the raw material and the countryside the manufactured product" (Soler, 1993).
Recognition of this interaction, of this interdependency, leads to the joint or integral dealing with heritage, be it natural or cultural. It is on this point, that ecomuseums go one step further in their attention towards the community, given their integral understanding of territorial protection: taking into account the countryside configured by human hands, while at the same time taking into account the same human being who has manipulated these surroundings at different levels. Nowadays, it would be difficult to disassociate this concept: rural heritage has to be both natural and cultural at the same time.

Heritage, territory and community: the ecomuseums.

The word ecomuseum was invented by the museumoligist Huges de Varine, who was president of the International Council for Museums (ICOM), an Unesco-dependent body. Notwithstanding, its was uttered for the first time by the Minister for the Environment, Robert Poujade, on the 3rd September 1971 in an ICOM General Conference. A word which embraced both a new image and content. However, the formulation of the concept had already existed from around the year 1966.
The chronological comparison between environmental and cultural formulations makes us aware of a curious similarity in the period of gestation of their own formulations. Later on we will explain what we feel this movement implies.
Ecomuseums, in the Francophone world, are becoming a part of both environmental strategy and administration. They are the tool which provides a revolution of environmentalism to the community, however, despite significant change, territorial protection is a decision which continues to be taken by an intellectual and political elite, hence its misbalance in the territory.
To gain a better understanding of what ecomuseums represent, we will look at some definitions which the father of this wave, George Henri Rivière, gave in the month of January 1980: “An ecomuseum is an instrument which both the population and power conceive, produce and exploit together... A mirror in which population can observe itself, in order to recognise itself, a mirror in which it searches for an explanation about the territory which it occupies, as well as that of its forefathers. An expression of man and nature. Man is interpreted in his natural element. Nature is in its wildness, but also in such a way that traditional society and industrial society have adapted to their image." (La museologie, 1989).
These ecomuseums, of the so called first generation, the most pragmatic being La Marquèze a les Landes (1969), are born linked with the French Regional Parks. At their outset, they were very regulated structures, especially in terms of their organic functioning scheme. In fact, they have converted themselves into a political design for arranging the territory, which brings with it a certain decentralisation. Not withstanding, this design was not consulted with the community, the very addressees of the application. At that time, in the national parks, where this conceptual direction began, the first slanders began to emerge.
The graffiti's that qualify the ecomuseum experience as Indian reserve have begun to proliferate. For some there was the risk, as was recognised by the very G.H. Rivière, to treat inhabitants in a similar manner as one would an animal in a zoo, in other words, there was a high risk of the manipulation of the autochthonous population. This sensation is familiar to us and a reality in our surroundings, to the point where most of us have at least heard an expression similar to that of Indian reserves.
From this first generation onwards, ecomuseums have advanced more in terms of social and community participation, and those ecomuseums of third generation denomination (the urban ecomuseum of Fresnes) were situated in urban landscapes. These latest cases move towards the conception of the urban surroundings and test a philosophy of social participation. The second-generation ecomuseums are an in-between step, which can be seen in the Creusot example, created between 1971 and 1974. This example incorporates a group of 16 communities noted for their high industrial activity, but where the rural tradition is still kept alive.
We can now say that the first generation museums, as was stated by Francois Hubert, were somewhere between utopia and nostalgia (Hubert, 1997). Despite this, their philosophy, with its necessary adjustments, continues to be alive and valid.

Backround and social base of the new thinking.

This entire process of ideological and methodological reflection within the environmental field, which is crystallised in the application of certain determined models for territorial management, has both a social base and supports which drives it. Once the consequences of the second world war had been overcome, a gradual movement was produced which advocated a social compromise in all areas: in terms of art and society, social history, social museology...and for the first time there was consciousness of the fact that man has the capability to destroy the planet. Society and human beings became the axes of social and natural sciences. In the humanist field, society substitutes the elite and in the field of natural protection, conservation makes way for environmentalism.
We find ourselves in the 60's decade, experiencing the full crisis of the communist model for society between the young student and intellectual population. Both the hippie movement and the student movement of May 1968 in Paris are the two greatest expressions of this situation. Among the population, a desire for a return to the rural world is born, to recover the balance with nature. The first waves of neoruralism are born, which, on countless occasions, were connected with the autochthonous community. Their own models for communal organisation, clashed with the conservative ways of life of the autochthonous community, who saw them as strange and alien figures. This clash could have been attributed to the idea that dialog between culture and nature, had not yet penetrated society, in the same way that protectionism had not done in the natural environment.

Awareness raising, sensitibity, citizen sentimentality

This entire movement left a certain philosophy for a return to nature, easily exploited by the consumer society. In this manner, we will talk more about contact with nature rather than a return to nature. It deals with trying to get rid of all the commodities of contemporary life, maintaining an idea of invariability, permanence and ultra conservation of the immediate natural surroundings, the countryside where they reside at weekends. Peace and balance get closer to re-establishing daily stress. The ecocitizen is born, concerned with the preservation of the environment and ignorant of the needs of the natives who have secularly lived in the surroundings they wish to preserve.  The ecocitizen in pursuit of myths and fetishes, believes that his surroundings are inalterable and ignores that they are in constant change and that which he now defends, tomorrow may not even exist, in that it may have been substituted for something else, which may or may not be as natural as that which went before it, or will come after.
Consumer society concerns itself with creating a utopian notion of idyllic nature, of a harmonious past between man and his environment, a kind of happy world. The social and economic reality of these times quickly dismounts this infantile utopia. Indeed there was a certain balance between human activities and nature, due, however, to the fact that the former did not possess its current capacity to transform its surroundings, On the other hand, people's lives, their daily plight for subsistence was incredibly hard. No ancient labourer, nor ancient farm hand nor forester, would voluntarily go back to those life conditions, nor to the system of social relations that existed at the time. Social harmony with which we are faced at times strains itself in turning its scientific outlook towards the history of this world. Through this outlook, we observe social plight, as that which sustained the colliers in the Guilleries and a part of Montseny, to mention phenomena which we have studied. These plights have the same intensity as those produced in urban surroundings; even though they have never had attention, on behalf of social history, as have had the latter.
The easy ecological side to citizens becomes apparent with radical and not very well thougght out reactions, in the light of actions, which can in no way be described as ecological attacks, as in the case of the Christmas trees. To throw out cultivated products, such as Christmas trees, may constitute squander, but in no way is an attack on ecology, except that it is from a cultivated field. If this were the case at every harvest there would be an aggression against the surroundings.
This situation demonstrates the difficulties in penetrating to large population the idea of balance between natural conservation and anthropogenic exploitation, the idea of understanding heritage as a whole, where both natural and cultural elements come into play. In any way, it is sufficient that this philosophy keeps gradually sinking in. Here, the importance of the role of environmental education becomes evident, which is taking account cultural parameters into greater account. The valorisation of integral heritage has increasingly more support, with the vast majority of ecological or environmental protection associations currently taking cultural heritage into account. A good example of this tendency can be found in an article by Pierre Beaudoin, president of the Rhône-Alpes nature protection federation, who says: “An associative relationship will allow for the understanding and recognition that these two types of associated heritage are highly important". (Beaudoin, 1995).
Currently, both associations for safeguarding cultural heritage, as well as those that protect natural heritage, are currently conscious, the more solid ones in any case, that there is no heritage that presides over another and that they have a responsibility towards both.

The landscape, a question of society?

The countryside became a question of society from the middle of the XX century, when human actions subjected it to a series of changes which could deeply transform it, to the point of its own disappearance. But it also becomes a social problem when the people that have exploited and worked it, cease to have a priority role, especially when forced into an inexorable rural exodus because their productive activity ceases to be essential for society. When a collective, such as farmers or foresters, have to assume a secondary role, as a result of market surpluses they know nothing about, or because of community directives which oblige them to cultivate according to the dictations of those far removed from the territory, its affects the formation of the landscape, which is alive and in constant evolution. The disappearance of many farmers has created a modification in the landscape. In many cases this has led to the expansion of forested zones. Without a doubt the abandoning of the rural world, also contributes to the action of elements that alter the landscape, such as fires.
The traditional rural area presented a system of a certain balance. Man had created a favourable environment, which eased his existence. But this balance could also be fragile, extensive cutting down of trees to leave way for pastures for cattle or the abandonment of the cultivation could signify important modifications in the landscape. For example, forested zones of medium sized mountains of humid Catalonia have suffered enormous pressure due to charring and other forestry activities. As a result of this, the mountain has been heavily peeled and over exploited. The region of Sant Hilari Sacalm, which we could consider as the capital of the Guilleries and the main centre for the old exploitation of hoop, presents a dominant landscape for the teaselling of chestnut trees. It is clear that the research of resources has led to a change of the original landscape of the zone, which should be dominated by mountain holm-oak wood or oak grove, and has been substituted, as a result of anthropoid interests, by chestnut trees. These are but a few cases. We could go into thousands.
On the other hand, maintaining human activity in natural surroundings also contributes to the preservation of a great biodiversity of environments. It is clear that the presence of the so-called gardeners of the landscape (farmers, foresters, and cattle raisers) is a positive element. This denomination is also worthy of commentary, in that I suppose that it stems from an esthetical and/or very humanised vision of nature and so it could seem to the qualified addressees, or to those who live close to them. In this context, I would like to refer to the words of Jacques Cloarec, who stated: We are facing a destabilisation of social links that used to link the different actors concerned by rural landscape. (Cloarec, 1995).
The countryside also holds another social value for its community, that of identity. In the same way as cultural heritage, the countryside is a referential element for members of a collective because they are recognised as a community. We can, therefore, state that the surroundings have been a virtual area for rural communities, around which have revolved all their own activities. Consequently, if we wish to conserve these natural values, we need to conserve the agents that have moulded them. In this way, for example, it would be difficult to conserve the Pla de la Calma in Montseny as we now know it if the cattle rearing activity that it created, were to totally disappear.
I do not wish by these statements, to enter into a simplistic and limiting Manichetism, nor do I propose a return to nowhere, nor defence based on nothing. I simply want to show that, on the one hand, each social change can impose a change in the landscape, and, on the other hand, to what point culture and nature are implicated and interrelated. The simplest of actions have a consequence for both.
In the same way, if we believe that it is worth maintaining human presence in certain natural surroundings -which have suffered a long and intense abandonment, it would be worth giving its inhabitants some new resources, which could come from tertiarisation. Precisely from new uses for heritage, both natural and cultural, could spring a change in attitude or tendency of the autochthonous of rural areas.

What do we understand by indigenous community?

This is an interesting question because the autochthonous community is not the same in each natural area or in all rural territories. This is important when it comes to deciding on the actions to be carried out, because they will have to be different depending on the territory to which they are being applied. For example, you can't compare, in terms of social composition, the parks at Collserola, Garraf or Corredor-Montseny, with those of Montseny or Garrotxa, and even more so the Pyrenees. The first two are very much immersed in humanised surroundings, of the most in Catalonia.  The Montseny in contrast, is composed up of small sized villages, and the largest such as Sant Celoni, La Garriga, Arbúcies and Santa Maria de Palautordera vary from as little as 5000 to 15000 inhabitants. La Garrotxa, in contrast, is formed up of small villages that are gravitating around a centre of a middle-sized character: Olot, which has some 30,000 inhabitants. Neither of these zones have any great depopulation problems. On the contrary, if we talk of the first parks we mentioned, the situation is totally the inverse: it therefore deals with safeguarding some territorial residences from irreversible deterioration.
There are both similarities and differences between Montseny and Garrotxa. Taking the similarities, we find that in both territories the high and central zones are depopulating, but they do not leave from the same territory. And here lie the differences. If in the case of Montseny, the population which abandons these areas is absorbed by a group of small towns, of the aforementioned characteristics and situated on the periphery of the massif, in the case of Garrotxa this population is absorbed by just one city, Olot. Finally, in the case of the Pyrenees, with regions such as Pallars, which do not have at best 10.000 inhabitants, respond better to the archetypes of the economically deprived rural zone, with a significant ageing and a deplorable exodus of its own population. This latter case corresponds to the traditional prototype of rural society.
In communities that are socially diverse, the people who work in a shop or a factory are as autochthonous as those that carry out primary activities traditionally linked with the territory. The latter have greater needs and urgencies to adapt to new uses of the territory, while the former only get involved if there are guaranteed benefits. It is obvious, that their inherent sensibilities of both groups, which belong to the same community, towards their surroundings will be very different. Those linked directly with the territory having a greater sensibility towards the management policies of the same, while those who live on the fringes of it will hold a more distant attitude.
Another element to take into account is the loss of political power and influence of those sectors that are linked to traditional tasks as a result of economic and demographic decline. This loss of local influence has to be replaced by means of actions on a corporate level. This situation can become quite dramatic in the event that the general interest is not in harmony with the particular interests of this segment of the autochthonous community.
To this heterogeneity of the components of the community, marked by the individuality of each rural territory, we must not forget to add the resident. This can become a element of distortion when, despite working outside of and not having any direct links with the original community, who becomes registered and intervenes in municipal life and defends its own residential interests, which totally legal.  Here we find ourselves with a new element, which has occurred in areas of middle mountains and which can be more frequent in high mountains, the Pyrenees, for example: the substitution of the native for the resident. The mass exodus from these areas of its traditional inhabitants has appeased this. Residents would be by definition ultra conservative, given that they have invested in a quality of life and would not want anything to modify that which they have acquired. On the contrary, there have also been cases whereby they have brought projects of massive exploitation, which do not in any way collaborate in the maintenance of a natural balance. One just has to remember that at one point certain people proposed the installation of ski slopes at Montseny.
Another element that differentiates natural areas is their frequentation and their closeness to large urban nuclei. In this sense, the case of Montseny is paradigmatic, with some 1,600,000 visitors annually due to its close proximity, almost carnal contact, with the Barcelona conurbation. However, the user, despite not being a member of the community, plays a primordial role.
The administration of a natural area should be very familiar with the sensibility of its habitants with regard to the preservation of natural values. Unfortunately, however, this is often not the case, in that they are familiar with the social, cultural, economic and demographic composition of their communities, but do not know the community's views regarding the protection of nature. In this sense, I think the study on the valorisation of the landscape carried out by the towns of Viscaya and Guipuscoa, regarding the territorial planning (Ormaetxea, 199) is interesting. I also think that the carrying out of a referendum on the exploitation of hydro resources on the river Arbúcies would have provided important sociological data referring to the attitude of the inhabitants regarding certain issues which could affect the natural balance.

The revaluation of heritage on behalf of the community

Human permanence in rural surroundings in demographic decline would not be appeased if it were only for the identity effect, however important it may be, rather it would stem from the valorisation of the heritage as an economic resource, as an element of community dynamics.
Nowadays, in light of the need for nature, in occasions of a fetish kind, and in light of the revaluation of cultural heritage on behalf of some mainly urbanites sectors, there is a move towards the recovery of the community heritage has been both forgotten and margined. This is expressed by Jordi Abella, director of the ecomuseum of Valls d'Aneu, when he states that "The revalorization of this heritage, or at least a part of it, has been a relatively recent process and very conditioned by changes in lifestyles and by the new perceptions which these entail" (Abella, 1997)
It will be this revaluation of heritage on behalf of the community, which will guarantee its inherent preservation. The community will cease to regard their own heritage in an indifferent manner, rather they will see it as a resource, and this will in turn consolidate its role of identify, which has been falling into oblivion or disregard. Heritage fell into disuse when its role as a means of identity was neither useful or of interest to anybody. Consequently the interest of the very community decreased; it's the typical disregard of that which is known and has been seen, generation after generation, but which is of no use or interest to anybody. When the community saw that interest of any kind was being shown from outside, for their heritage, they experienced a process of revaluation.
When talking of the sensibility of the rural community towards their territory, we have to differentiate between the different social and economic segments of which it is composed. The involvement of those groups that are directly related to the primary sector (farmers, foresters, forest owners, and cattle raisers) is traditionally greater than that of the rest of the community because their link with the territory is direct. For them the territory is not only the place where they have grown up and lived, rather it is their livelihood. On the other hand, the segments of this residential community in the urban nucleus live far from the realities of their territory, in that their economical dependence is on other sectors not directly related to the riches of their territory. We have even arrived at the extreme whereby members of the younger generations are unfamiliar with their own natural surroundings, despite it being right under their noses. I believe that we could currently talk of town urbanites. The involvement of this majority segment, which has more political weight within the community, can only come from the hand of the tertiarisation of heritage, integrally speaking
In a rural community, the involvement of both sectors has to be achieved in order to guarantee the conservation of territorial heritage values, whereby by heritage values we understand, not only the trees, plants and wild animals, rather the inhabitants and the territory itself, which is the container for all these elements.
As with everything in life, one has to be realistic and not idealistic towards autochthonous community of these rural areas. Should the interests of society have gone though a stage of converting their surroundings into an artificial area and should that have brought significant economic benefits to the community, it's certain that they would have become accomplices in the process, such as has occurred in other regions. Man in traditional society uses his territory and moulds it according to his interests, without taking into account the current capacity for radical transformation.  The idea that the surroundings and nature as a whole have been created so that man can make use of it has impregnated society. In keeping with the Jewish-Christian perceptions of go forth and multiply. Therefore, an ancestral philosophy regarding the balance with nature does not exist to diminish the technological advances of modern society.
This kind of providence between the laws of nature and primitive populations (and according to this tendency of our primitive ancestors would have been the farmers, livestock raisers, and foresters) it is highly arguable. Even more so, I believe that it is just another myth of consumer society. If we pass through areas where the forest has been recently cut, we will easily find cans of oil from motor driven saws, discarded by the very woodcutters. These attitudes shatter the aforementioned myth, even though they are no attack on anything. It is like everything, a question of measurement. When the rural surroundings are being used only by the community which reside there, a balance exists between the two; when these surroundings are frequented by thousands and thousands of people, this equilibrium is broken. Environmental protection has to be based not on fundamentalists which simply slander any attitude which could be harmful to the environment, rather on the control and application of corrective measures against phenomena of a considerably destructive capacity.
There is no doubt that maintaining the population in rural zones is a guarantee for preservation, however, to make this a reality one has to have the necessary resources for environmental protection. These resources come from the valorisation of heritage and its validation will, in turn, instil interest in the community to preserve it.

New territorial uses. Sustainable development

The resources of those that dispose of rural areas- be they protected or not- that do not have industrial activity are currently diverse and in some cases, important. The maintenance of these traditional activities (agriculture, animal breeding, exploitation of the forests), the growth in urbanisation due to the increase in second homes, the exploitation of natural resources (hydroelectric, water bottling, skiing, mining..) and tourist exploitation of its own natural and cultural heritage are all good examples of the economic potential which can be reached.
All these activities have a great capacity to transform their surroundings. Among them, probably the most controlled are traditional activities. With regard to urban growth, despite existing pressures, this is highly controlled in protected areas (not the case, however, in the rest of the rural territory). The level of aggression on the surroundings depends on the type of activity being exploited.  Hydroelectricity, for example, is an activity of public interest that we have practically taken for granted as another component of the landscape; on the other hand its action can be made reversible. In relation to the issue of bottling, which could also be considered as a public utility because everybody has the right to drink quality water, it can only be forecast within the existence of the Plans for the Exploitation of Water Resources of a river.  In these plans one has to regulate the authorised possession for commercialisation and invest the sufficient effort to carry out rigorous periodic controls. There are also other elements to be considered such as human and urban consumption, agricultural and industrial consumption, which are, without doubt, of greater quantities and more than likely superior than the extraction of water to be bottled. Regarding ski stations, while they do not proliferate they can be controlled. With regard to mining, and especially the extraction of arid and stone, these activities are the most irreversible, despite existing restoration policies. Luckily, these actions while still very aggressive, tend to be more punctual. Finally, tourism also represents an important aggression against the environment if it becomes too large and covers the entire territory.
Does one need to ask oneself which of these activities reinvests back into the community? It is obvious that traditional activities, as well as urban growth, do, but in the cases of the remaining activities the level of community involvement is lower, which is not to say that they do not bring certain profits. Normally the big beneficiaries of industry which exploit the environmental resources (hydro-electric, bottling companies, ski stations, mining) tend to be large external companies who have carried out the investment and keep the greater part of benefits for themselves, even though they do create some job positions. The large investments in ski stations only return a small part to the community, mainly in terms of catering and accommodation. The advantage brought by skiing is that it attracts large numbers of people that are potential guests for accommodation establishments in the area, in that the ski stations tend, at an increasing rate, to retain the skier in their installations.
Contrary to this, the earners of small-scale tourism reinvest totally in the community and contribute to the diversification of its economy. These types of activities, by being managed by members of the community, tend to maintain a balance between the exploitation and conservation of the heritage, which has created the demand. The destruction of their heritage, be it natural or cultural, would mean an end to their resources.
If we wish to preserve rural territory from becoming artificial, and if we believe that this preservation will maintain the communities in their surroundings, we must move towards the generation of resources which diversify community economy in a sustainable manner, which signifies making these areas more tertiary. We do not believe that these types of activities have to be exchange for something. The administrations that decide to steer a territory away from prevailing humanisation, have to create the possibility for the generation of these resources.
Before continuing to talk about sustainable development it would be a good idea to define what be actually mean by sustainability. In the sense, we have gathered the principles of sustainable tourism, drawn up by the English Tourist Board (1994). We have included seven principles:
• Surroundings have an intrinsic value superior to that of active tourism. Its enjoyment for future generations cannot be damaged.
• Tourism can be a positive activity, given that it is a potential benefit both for the community and their territory, as well as for visitors.
• The relationship between tourism and the surroundings can be entertained, while the surroundings are sustained on the long term. Tourism can not be the cause of damage to its own resources, nor endanger future enjoyment, not create unacceptable impacts.
• Tourist activities and their development have to respect the balance between nature and the character of the place in question.
• In some situations, harmony between the needs of the visitor, the territory and its community can be reached.
• In a dynamic world change is inevitable and often this change is beneficial. Despite this, some adaptations to change may not adapt to this principle.
• The tourist industry, local authorities and environmental agencies have the obligation to respect the mentioned principles and to work together to bring these into practice.
These principles satisfactorily define the meaning of sustainability and it can be easily extrapolated to sustainable development and growth. We could still add, however, an eight principle: this type of tourism has to be an activity that contributes to the diversity of its economy.
We will now move on to listing some suitable activities, many of which are familiar to all of us. We could include the following:
• Mountain sports such as rafting, rock climbing, canoeing and kayaking, mountain biking circuits, horse trekking...
• Regarding accommodation, to add potential to the creation and improvement of small hotels or hostels, campings and, more recently, farmhouse residences.
• To add potential for the elaboration of craft products, by means of merchandising; products such as la ceramics, woodcrafts, as well as confectionery products or the manufacture of sausage meats. If we add to the above, a commercialisation activity in the creation of brands of origin, we would have an important injection for a good part of the community.
• We also have to take into account the itinerary section or routes on foot or by car.
• There is a massive surge in health tourism: spas.
• Another interesting practice is to use our heritage resources (countryside, monuments, festivals, and traditions...) as a means of giving incentive to self-guided visits.

The territory is not the museum, rather the star piece

From this standpoint, I would like to explain the function of the museum and how it fits in with environmentalism. We have seen a wave of museumology, with the ecomuseums being the main exhibits, a combination of environmental dynamism under a prism of integral heritage.
To understand the why of this fact, let it suffice to say to say that the basic objective of this wave is the conservation and study of the territory; territory seen as a medium in which the life of the community is developed therefore, the inherent tendency to incorporate the territory into a museum: this is the heritage which has to be conserved (landscapes, monuments, people). In this sense the museum is a revolutionary and changing concept. The idea is not to freeze time or the area, rather to go though an evolutionary process at the same rhythm as the territory and society, preserving those elements that conform to the basic identity of the community. The reality beneath this view is systematic, in other words, it is composed of spatial and chronological units in which a whole series of cultural activities and natural processes are developed.  In the natural world, ecosystems are the connection of the systematic cultural realities. Consequently, the building where the museum is housed, and where the collections are deposited, is simply a centre for the interpretation of the territory.
The error of some of the ecomuseums was opting for activities in disuse when creating spin-offs from the main museum, which gave this impression of frozen in time. Museums have to try to recover the past, but working in the present and looking towards the future. The museums that work in this direction, such as the current Ethnological Museum of Montseny, have created a series of itineraries which show the current reality. These itineraries are complimentary to the overall vision of the museum, in that they offer a complete vision of the evolution of the lifestyles in the given surroundings. They show activities as modern day as coach building, bottling, the exploitation of decorative trees and Christmas tree... The museum involved link with the inhabitants, leading the campaign for the protection of Montsoriu Castle and promoting the creation of the Association of the Friends of Monsoriu Castle. The museum is also involved in environmental education and the defence of the balance between nature and culture. In short, it is a good tool because the Administration carries out policies for approximation with community and guide heritage protection policies from an integral standpoint. This has already been tried in other areas, however it is still incipient here. Moreover, initiatives, such as these, have come more from museums than from the administrations which manage naturals areas.
All these formulas for the exploitation of heritage are grouped under different denominations, such as agrotourism, ecotourism, rural tourism.... different words to express the same idea. Deep down, the users of these types of tourism connect with an excursionist tradition and with a holiday philosophy similar to that of the middle class at the beginning of the century. Holidays consist of visiting places which soften the summer rigours and which allow one to relax and enjoy the surrounding. The total opposite to those holidays that we currently inflict upon ourselves, from which we arrive back more exhausted than when we left.
Territorial protection can not lead to a loss of opportunities for the citizens affected by the its limitations, as this will relegate them to a second level, and this, by definition, does not fit in with a democratic system. For this reason, administration has to facilitate the tools for the diversification of the economy, in the same way in which they offer the inhabitants of parked areas a series of grants which, although never sufficient enough, facilitate adaptation or to achieve agreement to norms. And this is only possible by means of the sustainable exploitation of heritage resources. In order to guarantee the conservation of the environment, the autochthonous community needs to see it, not as a limitation of autonomy, rather as a generator of resources. The citizens of these regions will, therefore participate and become involved in the conservation of their rural heritage, which is an important step in guaranteeing the solidarity of the autochthonous community and avoiding a conflict between the general interests of society and the inhabitants of the zone. A conflict of this kind would never have been beneficial to the surroundings.
It is fitting that we should now touch on the issue of the participation of the community in the management bodies of a Protected Natural Area.

Participation of the community in the management bodies of natural areas

In this section, a brief comment about the role of the community in the management organs of the Natural Parks could not be left out. In Catalonia there are thirteen protected areas:
• 1 National Park (Aigües Tortes, managed by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and by the Spanish Government)
• 7 Natural Parks (The Volcanic Region of La Garrotxa, The Empordà wetlands, Cadí-Moixeró, the delta of Ebre and Montserrat mountain, belonging to the Autonomous Government of Catalonia; massif of Sant Llorenç del Munt and serra de l'Obac, owned by the Provincial Council of Barcelona; Montseny massif, of the Provincial Council of Barcelona and Girona)
• 5 Protected areas, which could be included in other parks (Garraf, Montnegre-Corredor, Parc Comarcal de Montesquiu and OlèrdolaRegional Park, of the Provincial Council of Barcelona; Collserola metropolitan park, managed by the Metropolitan Entity of Barcelona and the Provincial Council of Barcelona).
• Apart from these, there are zones which have been included in the Plan for Areas of Natural Interest in Catalonia (PEIN) and a new figure which has been created by the Provincual Council of Barcelona, consortiums as a result of a pact between the town halls and this administration.
It is obvious that in light of such diversity there is not a homologous formula for the participation of the community in the management of a protected area. In the case of the Provincial Council of Barcelona, two different councils have been created: the co-ordinator, which includes representatives from administration only (town halls, regional councils) and the consultative, including representatives from entities and associations (cultural, scientific, ecological, sport, hunting, fishing, forest owners...). The Provincial Councils’ parks are fruit of a Special Plan of the Commission for Urbanism, for this reason, the administration with various urban bodies, such as town halls and regional councils are represented here. The Autonomous Governments, on the other hand, counts on the participation of patrons or management bodies, which include representatives from administrations and groups with a special involvement in the management of parks (proprietors, prestigious scientists...). In some cases, such as that of the volcanic zone of Garrotxa, a Co-operation Council also exists, whereby entities and associations participate in an open manner, without having to go in representation of anyone. In fact, it is a rather complex issue because each protected area has its own peculiarities and deserves an in depth treatment. In any case, what's important here is not the organic modalities of participation, rather its level.
In this sense, the prerogatives for the management of a protected territory are in the hands of the management administration, which creates channels from the rest of the administrations and groups that have interest in this management to participate or consult. Therefore, the level of participation in the management is, logically, limited. In fact, decisions regarding territorial protection are taken in function with the common interest of society as a whole, in consequence, supra-municipal institutions have all the democratic and legal right to carry out this task and to continue managing these areas according to their own criteria. This, however, cannot involve the revitalisation of the role of the community or the sectors with interest in the area, by intelligence and for the survival of the project. However, an administration cannot tolerate that the interests of certain groups prevail above the general ones.
Another different problem that the administration of a protected area has to face, is that of providing an incentive for the involvement of the social tissue of the community. This incentive not only has to try to involve those groups with obvious interest in the area, rather it has to incorporate the community as a whole.

Conclusion

This article has tried to deal with how the concept of environmental protection has gone from purely conservationist ideals to ones that promote a balance between nature and human activity. In this process philosophies which defend an integral treatment of the heritage have been promoted. This very philosophy gave greater attention to the community, or autochthonous communities, finding out their needs and gauging the level of involvement required from them. We have also seen how the theoretical body of this tendency ran in parallel to a greater attention of the general public towards ecological questions, yet not exempt from myth and unjustified sentimentality. This has all led to us to consider the landscape as a social question, the autochthonous community being the first to be affected.
In light of this fact we saw it fitting to analyse what we mean by the autochthonous community; once this was done we went on to explain how its members are in a process of revalorization of their heritage, and since this revalorization has to come from both its identity and the existence of mechanisms for the development of a sustainable community, the generation of new uses of the territory which have aggressive effects on the rural territory must be avoided. Finally, we briefly analysed the different types of community participation in the management bodies of natural parks.
In conclusion we insist in the believe that the involvement of the community in the protection of its surroundings goes hand in hand with mentioned elements, but that at home the sustainable exploitation of recourses is beginning and needs to continue. We also need to strive towards increasing the awareness of the park image among the public. In this way, I think that the administrations of natural areas have to carry out actions destined not only at the community, but also at culture, sport and leisure in general, as well as facilitating the generation of resources. A community identified with their environment and convinced of that they need to preserve it to safeguard their best interests, is the best guarantee for its protection.
Finally, I believe the formal participation of the community in management bodies to be correct. Those who really have to take the final decisions have to be those elected, given that they represent, according to administration, society or the community as whole, not just concrete sectors. Another issue is the need to take the population into permanent account so that relations are more harmonious and action policies more effective. In fact, the sensibility of the Administration with regard to the problems of its people is more important than the modality of the participation mechanism •
 

Bibliography
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• BOADA, Martí (1997): “Concepció i percepció del medi. Perspectiva històrica i actual”. Cultura-Natura. Museus i Parcs Naturals. Aixa, núm. 8. Arbúcies, Museu Etnològic del Montseny, La Gabella.
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• COLLIN, Gérard (1992): Patrimoine culturel et naturel: Le programme l’homme et la Biosphère de l’UNESCO. La construcció del paisatge (natura, cultura i patrimoni). Jornades de debat al Museu de Gavà. Dossier de patrimoni Cultural. Barcelona, Secció de Patrimoni Culturalde la Diputació de Barcelona.
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• HUBERT, François (1997): “L’ecomuseu, entre utopia i nostalgia”. Cultura-Natura. Museus i Parcs Naturals. Aixa, núm. 8. Arbúcies, Museu Etnològic del Montseny, La Gabella.
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• VIEL, Annette (1997): “Quan bufa l’esperit dels llocs. Natura i cultura al diapasó de la perennitat”. Cultura-Natura. Museus i Parcs Naturals. Aixa, núm. 8. Arbúcies, Museu Etnològic del Montseny, La Gabella.
 

Local development in mountainous regions
Lluís Llobet i Martí
Geographer, Managing Director of the Centre Art i Natura

Artistic activity serves as a stimulant for the revitalisation of the small localities in the mountain regions. These villages offer tranquillity and an ideal space for work and the exchange of experiences among creative artists from diverse disciplines. Th success of this combination -art and nature, is shown in various cases in the United States and Europe. In Catalonia, an Irishman and the inhabitants of Farrera, in Pallars Sobirà have been the pioneers.
 

Once we have introduced the two historic moments of the village of Farrera, distanced in time only by 15 years (see the corresponding table), it will be far easier for the readers of this article to understand the extraordinary links which the Centre Art i Natura has with the recent, and the not so recent past of the population it has welcomed. The synthesis between diverse cultural legacies of both the traditional mountain civilisation and the contemporary urban realities, has featured this project from the beginning. It is worth mentioning that without the so-called neorural  movement, the Centre Art i Natura would not have been possible. Projects such as Farrera, characterised by little resources and mainly adverse conditions, owe their success, not to an artificial model of management arbitrarily designed from an office, but rather to a maturing process closely linked to a territory and a social reality which accepts it and makes it its own. A seed can only germinate if it finds favourable humidity and temperature conditions.
Even though the description of the experience of this small village in the year 1970 seems paradigmatic of high mountainous regions as a whole, the same cannot be said for the second equally realistic experience. Certainly, that which occurred in Farrera in the '80s is an individual case, but we would be mistaken should we think it to be a unique one. Never has a rigorous study been carried out on the scope of the neorural movement in Catalonia, however it is sure to have mobilised thousands of young people who, for the most part, would have finished up resettling again in their places of origin. In any case, the small percentages that have resisted the initial difficulties have been the seed of economic and demographic renovation. It can, nowadays be demonstrated that the vast number of mountain villages that have undergone innovative initiatives (quality craft foods, ecological products, non-traditional cultivation, outstanding services...) can be associated with immigration against the wave of the 70's and 80's. This obviousness is not synonymous with the current persistence of neoruralism. Simple observation of the reality indicates that current small, but significant, demographic growth, which is noted in certain regions, such as Pallars Sobirà, is due to economic activation spurred by the development of adventure sports and the tourist sector in general. Far from idealisms, current immigration is clearly motivated by labour.

From an artists residence to the Centre Art i Natura

The project for the creation of an artist's residence in Farrera was the brainchild of a certain Irish individual, Bernard Loughlin, who passed through Farrera in 1976 and remained there for a year. At that time, neither him, nor any of those who later worked on the project, had even the faintest idea of this possibility. Years later, back in Ireland, he saw an advertisement in a local newspaper with an attractive offer for a man who was not afraid of a challenge: to manage an Anglo-Irish property North of the Republic, which the prestigious and disappeared theatre director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, had donated to a cultural project linked to artistic creation. Today, nineteen years later, this old aristocratic estate has become one of the most prestigious artistic residences in Europe: The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Co. Monaghan, Ireland.
For the past few decades, artistic residences in the western world are installations which offer international groups the possibility of developing creative projects in new atmospheres and in close contact with other artists. The residences are normally obsolete monumental buildings which have been restored with the aim of achieving a symbiosis between content and continuity: architectural heritage at the service of artistic creation. In Europe, old aristocratic palaces and noble castles that have been converted into residences are widespread and in many cases closely associated with art schools. Good examples are the Svholls Soilted Academy and Schloss Balmoral in Germany, Hospitalfield in Scotland or the Civitella Ranieri Centre in Italy, to mention just a few of significance. However, the conversion of old buildings from the historical centres of cities, which have been affected by industrial crisis and urban growth, is becoming more frequent. Such is the case of the old fire station in Dublin, The Fire Station Artists’ Studios, the old hospital in Berlin, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the abandoned warehouse in Vienna, which was converted into a cultural centre in 1981, WUK (Werkstätten und Kulturhaus) or, to mention examples closed to home, such as Sabadell and Barcelona: The Warehouse and Hangar, respectively. This phenomenon is even older and more significant in the United States and Canada, than it is in Europe. Apart from the European modalities, a large number of North American initiatives have converted farms, barracks and even villages, as is the case of the Headlands Centre for the Arts and Villa Montalvo in California, or they have directly designed modern establishments, such as the present day Atlantic Centre for the Arts in Florida and the Banff Centre in Canada.
In 1989 Bernard proposed his idea for starting a residence for artists in Farrera to a small group of people that reside or have resided in the village. From his experience as the head of Tyrone and as a good visionary, the Irishman felt that the characteristics of the high mountain and the very history of Farrera would offer optimum conditions to reiterate a project similar to his own. Jordi Viñas, Claudi Cortés and Xavier Rodríguez allowed themselves to be convinced and together with Bernard, formed the first work team, the embryo of what is today the Centre Art i Natura.
Strategies for urban development

During this initial stage of the project, between 1989 and 1994, contacts were established in order to achieve the support of cultural and political institutions from around the country and they began to explain the project to the Farrera Local Council in the hopes that the Mayor and the Open Council  would accept the public ownership of the project, as was finally achieved. In parallel to this, they began writing up a first document, which was to become very useful as both an internal point of reflection and an external letter of presentation. During this initial period of time, and as a result of the search of a suitable physical location for the project, one of the most interesting strategic urban debates began: would they have to acquire a single urban property which could hold all the services and installations together on a new site, or would it be more convenient to take advantage of the urban centre by renovating and converting old buildings?
As a result of a large period of depopulation, the small mountain centres have a lot of urban sites in ruins as well as abandoned and unused buildings, which offer great scope for the localisation of new installations. The most important conditioning factor is obviously ownership, associated with the inherent predisposition to sell. All too often, this predisposition in mountain regions is more subordinated by family conflicts and disputes between heirs, rather than by disagreements over the price asked and that which one is willing to pay. Farrera is no exception in this sense and the apparent possibility of acquiring a property coupled with the hurry to dispose of an architectural pre-project led to the shifting attention from the localisation dilemma towards the apparently easier option: that of containing all the project installations in the same perimeter. Finally, however, everyday practice, financial logic, public vocation and the necessity to construct a project of consensus led to them reassuming the initial strategy.
By means of the Leader l Programme, a first European aid was channelled to the project, which, together with the collaboration of the Provincial Council of Lleida and the Local Council, was designated towards the rehabilitation of the municipally owned old schools of Farrera and Burg . A strategy of implementation and localisation of the Centre was then begun in Farrera, which allowed for a gradual introduction of the project in light of its uniqueness, as well as it being dispersed throughout the centre instead of centralised. As a public project from a small mountain municipality with few resources and varying sensibilities between those involved, this gradual approach allowed, both from the point of view of management as well as social acceptance, for the assimilation of the changes and inherent adaptation to them.
With dispersion being a criteria for the location of the Centre, more scope for possible interventions was achieved, allowing them to make decision based, for example, on architectural issues or simply, better prices. Yet, there is one conceptual reason at the point of applying the criteria for a dispersed intervention: that of facilitating the interrelations of the users and the village inhabitants. The activity of the Centre Art i Natura in a nucleus as sparsely populated as Farrera contributes greatly to the diversification and enrichment of social relations. A concentrated structure would have most probably provoked a ghetto and the project would not have contributed to the promotion of social development.

Equipment and rehabilitation of agrarian architecture

Apart from the School, Ramon house, or the TV club, is currently being used and has been rehabilitated for its new function. Notwithstanding, when required, three more houses can be availed of thanks to their owner's affinity towards the project. This system allows for flexible capacity in relation to needs. 4-5 places are permanently available but they have managed to house up to 26 people in good conditions. This spring, after a long process, construction will commence on the most ambitious urban intervention to be carried out until now. An open hayloft or scaffolding, known as la Bastida de Manresa, which has been used for drying grass and hay, will be restored and converted into workshops. With a monumental wooden framework to the south face and constructed towards the end of the XVIII century or the beginning of the XX century, this outstanding building, together with the steeple tower of the church of St. Roc, is all a symbol of the village. The urban strategy of the centre has rescued it from its more than probable future transformation into a second residence .
The intervention, as well as restoring this monument which is representative of popular mountain architecture, equips the centre with a dining room, toilets, storerooms and bedrooms for the residents, complete in a new building constructed on the ruins of a hayloft of the same agrarian infrastructure. The enlargement of the square and the reopening of an old street complement the intervention, giving it an even more public dimension. Finance is mainly European, with 50% of support coming from the Intereg II project and the rest from various Catalan institutions, mainly the Autonomous Government of Catalonia.

Areas for artistic creation

In post-industrial societies such as ours, new needs appear which are linked with the lifestyles to which they belong. The fact that the greater part of the population are urban and follow a lifestyle that in many cases can be likened to a roller coaster, coupled with the fact that the media invade our daily lives with their omnipresence, provokes society with the compensatory desire to enjoy nature, silence and tranquillity. Those professionals dedicated to creative work and which use reflection, imagination, skill or intuition as their main tools, need these compensations probably in greater doses. It is also true that new stimulation and experiences, the contrast of ideas and projects, the exchange of creative processes and techniques are indispensable requisites for the work of artists and researchers. The Centre Art i Natura is fruit of its own era and was born with the desire to be a useful service to those sectors of contemporary society.
In 1994 the first residential pilot program in Farrera was carried out. It consisted in finding out if a group of artists, selected especially for the occasion, would find it suitable for their creative work to live for a few days in Farrera. With the help of European funds from the Kaleidoscope Programme, and in collaboration with the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Les Ateliers des Arques of Languedoc, a three way exchange was organised: A Kaleidoscopic Pilgrimage. Ten artists, of three different nationalities, went on pilgrimage to the three rural residences, with the final objective of producing a work of art stemming from the impact of their experience. One year later the work was exhibited in Derry, Dublin, Tolosa and Lleida, and a catalogue was edited in the three languages . The artistic result is highly satisfactory and the Farrera stage of the pilgrimage could not have been more co-operative: four houses were volunteered for the event and a dining room was improvised with the collaboration of the locals.
The successful pilot experiment together with the granting of a new Kaleidoscope award, this time applied for directly by the Centre Art i Natura, speeded up the provisional summer opening in 1995 and the definitive opening on the 1st Jan. 1996. Since this date, a stable residential programme with a regular accommodation, workshop and daily meals service has been in place for those users who have booked beforehand and with a clear work project in mind. As an organisation decentralised from the Local Council, full approval was given for the functioning norms of its service and the first tariffs are established. An administration council was created, to be assessor for the centre, with territorial representation at local, regional, national, and international level, formed up of ten people linked with artistic and scientific sectors. In concrete, there is representation from institutions, from local administration, such as the Farrera Local Council and the regional council of Pallars Sobirà, as well as from institutions associated with art, such as l'Escola Massana de Barcelona and l'Escola Municipal de Belles Arts de Lleida, institutions associated with research and investigation, such as The Universidat Autònoma de Barcelona, l'Institut d'Estudis Leridencs and, finally, the international association of residential centres for artists, Res Artis.
With the support of the assessor council and the Irish sister centre, in the Summer of 1996 an international exchange was organised "The Landscape in Modern Art". It consisted of a three month programme of a highly environmental nature, during which three groups of 5 artists each, from 8 European countries and selected from nine international institutions, would become impregnated with the Cultural Landscape (Return the name to each place), The Vertical Landscape (Astronomy and Territory) and the Horizontal Landscape (Lost ways) of the Catalonian high mountain regions. At the end of each month public presentations were made of the work carried out which attracted an important number of inhabitants from the valley; many of whom were viewing and touching contemporary art and artists for the very first time. Months later a demonstrative catalogue of the experiences  was edited, of which 1500 copies were distributed.
The carrying out of the "The Landscape in Modern Art" exchange, together with the subsequent edition of the demonstrative catalogue and the Centres’ active participation in the annual assemblies of the international association of Res Artis, situated the Farrera Centre Art i Natura in the international residence guides for 1997. From this moment onwards requests for information began to arrive from all around the world, some of which materialised into working stays. Since the beginning of the initiative, some 95 artists have passed through Farrera the majority being European and painters. Little by little the origins as well as the disciplines have diversified. Average stays are three weeks and are mainly concentrated in the months May through to October. Those artists who chose to do so, can leave work at the centre's Art Source, which is periodically exhibited in Pallars under the title of "Contemporary Art of the Mountain" .
The last exchange, held in 1998, enjoyed the participation of the Irish residence in Tyrone and a residence project from the Aland islands, in Finland, namely Kökarskultur. In this case Aland-Pyrenees-Ireland focussed on an environmental exploration through islands and mountains. This one was a program in which each centre sent two artists from its country  to each of the other associated centres, with the commitment of introducing them to the natural and cultural surroundings of each region. The experience may be repeated again this year.
These exchanges are doubly beneficial, both for the artists which receive the grants, as well as the centres which organise them. For the artists, their participation is a respond with other artists and countries of diverse cultural contexts and realities, which open their minds to new research horizons. For the centres, the exchanges make their organisers define and cover the content of the programmes, this exercise being the best antidote against the risk of becoming mere hotels for artists. The Centre Art i Natura has opened a new field of exploration based on the immersion of the artist in the strong natural environment of the high mountain area. The objective is to familiarise the artist with its biological diversity and ecosystems. In the same manner, the experience with the cultural surroundings of the mountain and its own heritage make the artist sensitive towards respecting cultural diversity. In a great number of cases, the resulting work reflects and transmits the acquired experience.
In 1996 Unesco's International Source for the Promotion of Culture proposed that, under the framework of the Artists Grant Programme, the Centre Art i Natura enter into participation. Since then it offers, on an annual basis, a two-month stay to a visual artist from East Croatian and Bosnia-Herzegovina. To date, Ana Opalic, a photographer from Dubrovnik, has benefited from the grant, as well as fellow Croatian painter Tina Gverovic. Next year the third edition will be held and, unfortunately, Kosovo has had to be included as a new territory of origin for candidates. Under this programme, the Centre has contributed the Catalan society's campaigns of solidarity towards the victims of the Balkan conflict.

Recovering of heritage and research

In mountainous areas there happens to be an autochthonous disinterest in their own cultural heritage that contrasts with its extraordinary richness. We are not just talking about architectural and artistic heritage, a more intangible and ethnological heritage. Since the beginning of its activity the Centre drives the recovery of this heritage. The first activity has even based on one of the most fragile aspects of heritage, and one in danger of distinction: topography. Taking the relief work of research which was begun by Rafelk Oppenheimer, a farmer from Farrera, the topologist from Montseny, Joan Lopés, has continued retrieving this work from the oral world and is currently waiting for sufficient finance in order for it to be reproduced on a map, where it belongs.
The publication of a book entitled Respostes de la Coma de Burg Tírvia i la Vall Ferrera al Qüestionari de Francisco de Zamora (1789-1790) (Garsineu Edicions 1997) has been a further initiative of the centre, a book which reflects with great precision and detail how mountain people lived 200 years ago, and their inherent concerns. The editing has been under the of the medieval historian, Jaume Oliver who recovered them from the Royal Palace of Madrid, transcribing them and introducing them with learning. Finance has been provided by the Local Councils involved, together with the Regional Council and the Heritage Assocation of Vallferrera. The publication has been distributed free of charge among the residents of the three municipalities involved.
At this present moment and time, two lines of investigation have begun on the evolution of the high mountain landscape of Mig Pallars. One bases its research on a pollen analysis for the determination of the influence of the furnaces on forested areas, from the roman era right through to the last century, directed by the geographer Agustí Esteban. This project forms part of a wider study on the metallurgical activity of the region. The other is focused mainly on the evolution of the customs during the second half of this century and their consequences on the traditional methodology which anthropogenic activity has created. This second study is being directed by another geographer, Joan Manel Soriano.
It is hardly a coincidence that geography should be one of the disciplines most connected with the Centre Art i Natura. A local development project such as ours, both for the development concept in itself, as well as for its own location, naturally possesses a series of geographical ingredients. For this reason, the university practicals of the Mountain Geography module of the Faculty of Geography of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) are carried out at the Centre Art i Natura. To date, some 225 students have been at the Centre.
Relations with the mentioned University were consolidated in Spring of 1997, with the carrying out of an intensive Erasmus Project on the urbanism of the mountain region co-ordinated by the geographer Oriol Nel·lo. Architecture students from the Italian Universities of Turin and Venice participated, as well as students from the UAB. The work project of the architecture students was centred on the conversion of the Bastida into installations for the Centre, and the geography students studied the demographic potential of the urban nucleus of the municipality. The results of this international course were later on presented to the Regional Historical Archive of Sort, as well as to the mayor of Farrera and the president of the Administrative Council of the Centre, Jordi Caselles. According to the agreement, the UAB provided the equipment for the workshop and the Centre offered reduced rates to users from this university.

Art and nature at the service of development

Luckily the Centre Art i Natura is not all we have. Currently, only one full-time person works there, and two more on a part-time basis. Today, economic activities in the village are very varied and cover all the major production sectors. The investments that are soon to be made in Bastida de Manresà must be used to give a qualitative impetus to the project, doubling its activity and creating at least two more stable jobs. The consolidation of the project should guarantee a sustainable growth to allow for maintaining a minimum population at Farrera to keep it feeling like a village. Villages are made by the people that live there with dignity and the Centre Art i Natura is contributing to this at the present, but most contribute even more in the future.
The current demographic vitality of Farrera is best reflected in its age distribution/structure. In 1996, the municipality  had the youngest population of the Pallars Sobirà region, and without doubt the entire Catalonian high mountain area. The age bracket between 0 and 14 constituted 18% of the population, whilst the regional average was 12%. If we look at the following bracket from 15 to 29, it continues to be one point above the regional average (Farrera 19'3), Pallars Sobirà, 18'3%).
If we evaluate the demographic population in a more dynamic way and count the population/day at the end of the year, the Centre Art i Natura currently has two people. With the increase and consolidation of the project its contribution to people/day at the end of the year will be between 8 and 12. In this sense, a local development project in a small nucleus such as ours has to adjust its level as a first rule of sustainability.

Notes about sustainable development in the high mountain regions

Recent surveys carried out on the mountain regions, all note a change in the tendency towards a demographic and economic recovery. Even if there were no study, the people that live there can feel how in only a few years there has been an improvement in the quality of life. The improvement of the roads, the standardisation of telecommunications and above all the public health system and the educational service have been fundamental factors. In all these areas, public administration has played a leading role, in the understanding that when a region is below certain minimum levels- as was the mountain region at the return of democracy, only public power coupled with political will can turn around such a depressed situation as was this.
Taking into account the redress and recognising its merits, makes one think of a key question for the future: where is this all leading to? Or better said, where does all this want to go? When changes are rapid, the significance of this debate is made more urgent and the conclusions from it have to be translated into practice in the form of political actions and party budges. In this sense, it has opened up very positively with discussion of strategic plans for the Pyrenees region. From the high mountain region hundreds of residents have taken part with great expectations are now waiting for the results to prove to themselves that they have not been let down.
From my point of view there are some questions which have to be taken into great account when speaking about the development of the high mountain area. The first question is the root of all others and refers to its own geography. Mountain regions, because of their own particular orography, weather characteristics, population, economy, cultural identity, natural resources, fragility, biological diversity etc, need special consideration beyond that legislation already found in the "Law of the Mountain". Its particularity requires its own territorial planning. It is necessary, therefore, that the Territorial Plan for Catalonia contemplates a seventh region of the Pyrenees for planning.
Among its particularities, I believe that the relationship between the population and the territory is of utmost importance. The High Mountain region has always been one of a low-density population. This characteristic was compensated historically by a large population distributed among hundreds of small nuclei diffused throughout the territory sustained by a relatively intense primary activity. The majority of these population nuclei are now totally depopulated, or are so reduced that they will soon be. The tendency to concentrate activity in the Central Valley basins and their inherent growth accentuates internal territorial misbalance. The fragility of both the sides of the valley and its terraces demands definite action to promote small projects such as the one in Farrera. The territorial dichotomy is a major environmental danger for the high mountain region. The installations of a cable communications network has to be a priority to compensate the shameful fact of not having it until 100 years after its invention (Farrera, 1997). The effective installation of a telework is a definite hope for repopulation.
Breeding and agricultural activities play a vitally important role in stamping out environmental dangers. From the point of view of sustainability, livestock farming is the authentic strategic industry in the development of the high mountain regions. There are various reasons why this can be justified. If we understand the landscape to be a constitutive resource of the main tourist attraction, one cannot disregard the traditional activity of this main resource. It is obvious, but must be remembered, that livestock farming is an activity that offers permanent sustenance to the landscape. This sector occupies a lot of territory and the reduction in the number of people employed and/or cultivated hectares and pastures would be in detriment to the inhabited countryside. This activity reinforces the maintenance of the population especially in those areas where it is most necessary, which up until now, are a few dozen villages. Livestock farming is also a strategic activity because as it brings with it a diversity of animal and plant species and protects them from the danger of fire, especially when it stimulates an improvement in the quality of certain pastures, even though it may appear to do the opposite.
Nowadays, even more dangerous than fire in the high mountain regions is the lack of municipal urban planning. At a time of growing valorisation of mountain areas, with a multitude of urban projects for speculation and a great demand for second residences, municipalities cannot work without well-defined plans. Municipalities must be obliged to approve subsidiary norms which take into account the specific nature of the mountain townships. The majority of the small nuclei are already in a state of abandonment, which require urban planning measures which consolidate the traditional urban area with rehabilitation as the most pertinent intervention. Urban morphology is a mountain heritage which characterises enormously our urban landscape which should be kept as very singular. It would not be an absurdity to limit the urban growth of the small mountain nuclei to its own historically consolidated urban area. In the same way, it is ever more necessary to limit access of motor vehicles (4x4 and snow vehicles) to natural surroundings. Only putting in place a sectorial plan with the participation and the consensus of the mountain municipalities can relieve the growing impact of this activity. At the same time it would be relevant to study the impact of new practices such as heli-ski or rafting to regulate its use of the areas of nature.
Finally, if tourism has to be the main activity of the future economy of the mountain, we should from now on strive to win the battle of diversification. When more different types of tourist products are being offered, the lesser the dependency on the main subsection (river sports and skiing). In order to diversify one should also consider the dispersion of tourist activities. Our high mountain regions have ideal cultural and physical characteristics for the diversification and dispersion of the offer, and for the provision of total quality. We should remember that providing quality, specificity or uniqueness increases the added value of the product and attracts a more select public. Strategies which veer towards the dispersion and diversification of the offer will allow for the de-seasoning of tourism. The current hoards of tourists at Easter and during the month of August have a negative effect both on the sector as a whole and on the development of the region.

Epilogue

The objective of this article is to draw on elements for reflection and action proposals based on the experience of Farrera and which veer towards deepening the content of the concept of sustainable development applied to mountain areas. I cannot avoid dedicating it to the so-called survivors, according to the expression of the art critic, scriptwriter and writer John Berger. Survivors of a farming civilisation, while still dominant throughout the planet as a whole is sentenced to death in the western world. Survivors which, on the world mountain chains have a cattle breeding character, and which today in Farrera, in the heart of the Pyrenees and at the end of the second millennium a.d., have two names: Conxita de Poblador and Pepe de Marcal. They have survived the mountain and its ups and downs. They have inspired the Centre Art i Natura project and are now patiently waiting for the end of a civilisation which will include themselves. •
 

FARRERA 1970: 13 inhabitants, average age of 54 years

• Juanito. As has happened for many mornings lately, the brother and sister of the Poblador household are arguing. Juanito doesn't want to take the cows to graze with the excuse that his sister is now at home. These days Conxita hardly ever goes down to Llavorsí to serve in the hostel, where she has spent the best years of her youth. Each time they ask for her less and less and she now spends the most part of the year in the village. Her mother is grateful because despite her usual will and character, she has been loosing her strength for a while now: she is over 80 years of age. The old woman, who has milked the cows that morning, takes command and sends the boy to the yard at Maciana.
For a few years the yard at Maciana was called Coté when the family from Alendo moved to Farrera in a desperate attempt to maintain the centenary, or who knows even the millennium, link with the high mountain. Those from Maciana had left a few years before and those from Coté occupied the vacancy during a short period of time. The old folk, however, continued using the old name. Juanito made his way along with a series of strong swear words, dragging his heels behind him. A quarter of an hour later, the uproar was shifted towards the laundry trough, above the castle, where Perla, Marquesa, Bruna and Roia, charged with heavy loads, walked heavily and slowly along the Feixes pathway. Not so far behind, Juanito, amuses himself by gathering four endives and placing them directly in his pockets. The scanty pay which they received for their shortcomings, together with their earnings from the co-operative for their churns of milk which are served day after day, is more than enough to survive on. You can say that the only expenses are oil, salt, bread and wine. At the end of the month there are no light bill nor no insurance policy is up.  It's been years since they haven't paid rent. We could almost say that their future is solves as they are living in almost the same way as their forefathers have done before them. For the elderly of Poblador, however, there is one thought that keeps them awake at night: the family name of their fathers and forefathers will cease for ever more, their sons have no descendants and the daughter is gone beyond the age of marrying.

• Pepe.  At bit further along, literally like an ant, Pepe de Marçal does not cease to make journeys with the mule. In the forwarding journey, the carts which are at the brink of overflowing with silage which is spread on the plot in an orderly fashion. For the return journey he takes a full load of firewood which he had broken up during the sunny days of the winter. The density of the dark mountains indicate that soon the Marçal family will plant potatoes in the Puio field. At the weekend they'll plough it with a couple of cows which have been trained up for the occasion. Ploughing and other heavy work, are reserved for Sundays, because his son comes up at the weekends from La Seu where he is working as a car mechanic. The boy left when he was quite young to do an apprenticeship. His daughter is now studying to become a civil servant in Barcelona which a relative told them could get her a good job. When he thinks of his children he always comes to the same conclusion: "La Seu is still relatively near, behind Sant Joan as the fellow says, but Barcelona....." With his worries his pace slows down, and when he realises this, he accelerates and the mule protests with a shake of his neck. When he reaps the potatoes from the plot he'll then plant some rye, which always behaves well with the late frosts and makes pigs meat very good. Since his daughter has been gone, Geberosa always says that sowing the rye is too much hard work, but Marçal is an obstinate soul and thinks that she is still strong enough and knows that she has lost of skill for the harvest and in handling the horses. When Glorieta came up from Montesclado to marry the heir of the Marçal Household, it was one of the poorest households in the whole valley. It has now made a place for itself even within the Local Council and has some of the best lands of those who have left. He is satisfied that he returned to Farrera, having sampled the farming of the plane, at Conca de Tremp, for two years. They were the exception because in those days nobody returned.

• Joan. From the courtyard (eixida) of Manresà, Joan watches attentively the meandering of a herd. With his berry well positioned on his head, he controls the movement of a sheep dog as well as the place where the farmer is positioned. Every time he lets his concentration slide, always unintentionally, the sheep graze on his property. And he being renowned for his bad temper! Haughty, the house stands on the extreme eastern point of the village and its courtyard, like a watchtower, is the best viewing point of the whole Cultia. In the height of the Spring everybody has to stop, and

is the one who has most to loose. The largest groups of scythers, had meet in that house with his father, may the Lord have mercy on his soul, as the head. Shortly after his death, Joan opted for the new regional wave in livestock and he sold his mares and stallions leaving to a merchant in Mariola to raise cows. With the best pastures of Farrera and Manresà, they produce the greatest quantity of milk: five churns daily and every morning, where the milk jeeps stops, Joan is the envy of all the neighbours especially now that he is well paid. The adaptation of the stables of the Grand Era for some fifteen cows was easy. One only had to fill the base in with concrete covering the old stonework and leaving an irrigation ditch in the middle as a water escape, as was recommended by the sellers of agricultural machinery at the fairs. As for the rest, there are no big changes. The greater part of the grass continues to be put in the Hayloft, at the foot of the road. It always dries there even though it may go in a little green or have been wet by a sudden summer shower. There isn't a better hayloft in the whole of the region! The problem is the work, you have to be on top of it, you have to milk morning and evening and it is always getting more difficult to find farm hands. The two daughters of Joan and Angeleta are about to me married, and the heir has set his eyes on a girl from a good home in Escaló....There'll be nobody left at Farrera! Joan, who is far older than Angeleta, does not have the health of his former years, and she a good housewife from Manresà, has enough to do trying to look after that plot at home, what with minding the rabbits, poultry and the pigs. Luckily they have Maria! But since she fell from the courtyard when she was two, she has remained in that way....

• Quima. Quima of the Ramon household calls Esteve to his lunch. He had never been able to read the newspaper with such comfort as now that he was retired. He is known to be walking along on his way back from Llavorsí with the mail for the villages of Coma, and he reading the news of the day. He had always been the most informed man of the village and everybody listened attentively when he voiced his opinion. The Mail House, as it was also known by many folk, was converted into a social centre for Farrera the day the first television was installed. Before that it was already a frequented house owning to the small grocery shop which Quima ran, but the TV club attracted the entire village moved by the curiosity dispelled by the artefact, even to the most sceptic. While having lunch, the old couple comment the quantity of houses that have closed in the last years and they list from memory: the house of Andreu, Cargol, Lluçàs, Caterina, Felip,  Maciana, Bessolí, although this household brings back their herd in the fine, the house of Maria, Llucio... They reckon that the next will be that of Pubill d'Alendo as what will that boy do all on his own, with four sheep and his whole future before him.... At this point, they recall the case of those of Coté who left from Alendo for the sake of the boys and, a few years later, in 64 to be precise, those from Farrera moved because of the closure of the School. That was a misfortune year! It was as if the village had been plagues and nobody wanted to know any more about us. Another superior order also lead to the closure of the soldier's barracks and suddenly there were 6 or 7 good looking lads who left the parties deserted of dancing youths. They even remember the Marçal household, who moved, that terrible year to Vilamitjana for two years, but their adventure was a failure and they decided to return to the village. Not many days ago, Esteve was at the Town Hall to obtain a certificate of "Faith in Life" and he rummaged through some forms filled in by hand, which were left on the secretary's table. They happened to be the latest census and in the section entitles "Consensus Summary" there were 17 villagers in Farrera. Mentally, while he drinks his glass of milk, he subtracts the 4 neighbours who participated in the censure without actually living in Farrera. He then leafed through the 39 from Burg, 7 from Malolís, and the 30 from Montesclado. It seemed impossible, that the most important village in the valley, which had given its name to their municipality, who received at its school children from Mallolís, Alendo and Burg, that had a couple of teachers for over a hundred children, and some 15 soldiers, and some 40 open cases and close to two hundred people should now be about to be shut down. A recent polemic, which made the headlines of "La Mañana" for some months immediately springs to mind: "Regions to be closed according to the economical findings..." That wise man had said it before, but its hard to believe that a mountain so rich in forests, pastures and huts...  With his gaze lost on the collet de Juberri, Esteve now recalls the summers of his youth at the edge of the Tressó...They were the days.•

FARRERA 1985: 24 inhabitants, average age 32 years

• The Fesitval. The first to arrive was Juanito de Poblador making noise with the harmonica. He is never to be missed at any of the social events of Farrera. When he is greeted his eyes light up and with a wide smile he repeats one his most favourite sayings "There wind'll be getting up, the wind'll getting up". Almost everybody is at the preparatory meeting for this year's festival. There is a certain air of excitement at the last minute news: the Alendo household are also expecting a child! Now there is definite talk of an authentic "baby boom" in Farrera: this brings the number of pregnant women to three and it has only been a week since the birth of the second child in the Andreu household. There are now a total of six children in Farrera. The eldest of 9 years was brought to the village when he was only 2 and the second, his sister who was born in Tremp hospital.
Some think of the reopening of the school, where they happen to be at the present time. If things keep going at this rate, soon there will be more need for a school at Farrera than Tírvia. Marçal has also come to the meeting and brings a message from somebody who phoned in a foreign language which was neither French nor English, as he was told by Generosa, and will phone again in 20 minutes. He has one of those old tattered signs is hanging at his house, which has "Telephone" written on it. Some houses have installed a complex web of lines and wires, which reach Marcal house with a bell attached to their end to facilitate warning. Others trust Generosa's powerful whistle, which cannot go unheard. When he was told the news of the new pregnancy he was as delighted as any "Another Farrerener!"
Alendo is 10 minutes from here and administratively speaking is an addition of Farrera, a little hamlet of two houses and a small chapel, that participates in full right in its municipal community. On the other hand, Burg, Mallolís and Montesclado, with Glorieta as an addition, are nuclei with their own municipalities. This fact has spurred some a wide local autonomy within the municipality whereby each village obtains its own resources from its own forests and pastures and administrates them as it sees fit. Somebody puts a stop to Juanito taking his instrument from him and with that he comes out with another old saying which is familiar to all "The ignored boy from Portugal, the ignored girl from Portugal".

• The newcomers.  Since the last elections the inclusion of one of the young newcomers to the open and only list of 5 registered people was agreed, the most voted of whom is nominated mayor. The reedition of the Festival since 1980 is the first common cultural project which the new inhabitants are promoting. Each year a new poster is designed. Everybody has friends who participate from a distance to bring together musical groups, theatre or circus. In fact the origin of the attendees of the meeting could not be more diverse. Never before has the likes been seen in a little mountain village. The old neighbours from Farrera have been getting used to this, but from time to time are still a little surprised with the visit of the friend from Senegal, with skin as black as coal, or the London punk his hair on end, that friend of a friend, who has just arrived for the Work Festival in Barcelona.
The newcomers have been gradually arriving since the year 1970 and the majority don't know each other from Adam, except that those from Barcelona have been rediscovering common acquaintances. The rest come from different European metropolitan areas such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, or Berlin. In many cases, attempts to settle down in Farrera have failed, or said another way, have been another personal experience. Those who are today preparing the festival have been here for a few years, and can recall when the road was still a dirt track. The majority live in couples and have bought or rented a house. The rehabilitation of ones own houses has converted itself into one of the main activities throughout the year. Income comes, in the majority of cases, from temporary work in the forest or in days paid by the Town Hall for public works. There is only one case of a permanent work contract in the public function. Recently a group of four houses were built by a livestock farming co-operative with the aim of increasing in number of sheep herd, the only existing activity among the young. They come up with the idea of making sheep's cheese and complementing this activity with some mares. In the mid-term they would like to be able to remunerate the work of 6 people. The co-operative has been christened with a very suitable title: Juberri, which is the name of one of the most important mountain pastures of the village.
Meanwhile at the school the meeting continues, Generosa observes from the orchard how Conxita goes down from her house to fill a pail of water from the com de Manresà. Under the archway of Era de les Egües, well laid out in the middle of the road, Maria is having an afternoon nap. From the courtyard, Angeleta observes the two cows that are coming up the Cultia path, alone. As she cannot see the shepherd anywhere she lets out a tremendous cry: ¡Mariaaaa! •

1 Youth, of urban origin, residing in rural surroundings with a desire to live off the land. They are influenced by alternative-type ideologies, originating from the United States and developed in Europe by the French May, which combine a mix of ecology, pacifism and naturalism with the objective of building a model for life which is more harmonious with nature. The term was introduced to Catalonia in the `80s by the geographer, Santi Martínez.
2 Electoral law giving those municipalities with less than 100 inhabitants an Open Council, made up of all those citizens over 18 years that wish to participate in the equality of rights. The Mayor is picked during the elections, who is also resident of the Open Council, and has more power than conventional council representatives.
3 Once the school had been restored, the inhabitant of Burg, availing of their own autonomy, decided not to participate in the project.
4 The rehabilitation of the Bastida (Hayloft) involves a dialectic tension between restoration and functionality. The new uses require for the conversion of the building, while its distinctive exterior image had to respected to the maximum. During the conflict, the option of solar energy as a source of hot water and heating is added. The person who will have to figure out how to make everything connect is the project architect, Joan Albert Adell.
5 Kaleidoscopic Pilgrimage. Un Pelegrinatge Calidoscòpic. Un Pélerinage Kaleidocsopique. 1995 Belfast. With texts by Bernard Loughlin. The Catalan artists selected were: Begoña Montalban, Montse Soto i Gabriel.
6 El Paisatge de l'art Modern. Tres experiències per a un mateix paisatge . 1997, C. Viguera. Barcelona. It is a publication of the Centre for Art and Nauture with texts by Josep Borell, Antoni Llevot, Joan López, Joan Duran i Lluis Llobet. Translated into English by Matthew Clarke. The Catalan artists selected for the occasion were: Charo Gómez, Rafel Seguí i Serres, and Francesc Miñarro.
7 The new mountain heritage which is being created day by day at the Centre in Farrera has already exhibited its work in Pallars on a various occasions: at the Racó de Tívia, at the Valls d'Àneu ecomuseum, at the Comú de Particulars de la Poble de Segur and shortly they will be exhibiting in the Regional Heritage Archive of Sort. These Sources of Art are mainly made up of paintings, but also include sculptures, photographs, music and poetry belonging to almost 40 artists from around the world.
8 By means of public calls, grants were awarded to the visual artists, Monste Soto and Nano Valdés. The exchange received sponsorship from the Catalan Consortium for the External Promotion of Culture (COPEC).
9 Apart from the nucleus of Farrera (31), the nuclei of Burg (30), Montesclado (24), Mallolís (1), Alendo (1) and la Glorieta (1) make up the municipality of Farrera de Pallars. In brackets the number of inhabitants from the 1996 consensus- population by law- according to the Catalan Institute of Statistics.
 
 

Interview with Martí Boada
Geographer and publiciser of science
“The increase in forested areas reduces biodiversity"

Martí Boada i Joncà was born in Sant Celoni in 1949. He has a PhD studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), and he is a graduate of Catalan Studies at the University of Perpignan. Author of over 40 books on scientific thought and the publicising of science, he collaborates with different public media on subjects related to society and the environment. He was personally awarded the United Nations’ Global 500 prize by Nelson Mandela in recognition of his work.

At a moment in time when language, especially when used to describe the environment, is becoming poorer, the way that you express yourself is rich and somewhat exceptional…

My origins and the fact of being self-taught have had an enormous effect on me. I come from a true forest proletariat background. My parents were forest folk; one of my grandparents was a charcoal burner and the other worked in the forest. The environment has always served as a very realistic point of reference to me and a very important part of my training was based on empirical knowledge gained from the forests and mountains. I started to work in the forest when I was just 11 years old. My first experience of forest ecology began with the hatchet and was completed by my trying to understand the functioning of ecosystems, a combination that guaranteed a kind of imposed realism. The way I express myself and my ideas originate from an age-old tradition that has been passed on from my parents, of course. I’ll climb an oak tree if I know there’s eggs in the nest. Likewise, I know perfectly well if there are any boars or foxes in a particular stretch of country or that a male or a female has made a bear track. You don’t learn things like that in books.
This kind of imposed realism has led me to never try and explain what I don’t know how to do myself and to have a certain sense of commitment. When I enter into the academic world, such a frame of mind tends to break the mould.

Some experts see sustainability as being the fusion between scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom. Do you agree?

This is precisely the most innovative idea concerning sustainability being put forward in Mexico, where I was for almost a year. They call it diálogo de saberes (the dialogue of wisdoms) or the dialogue between different forms of knowledge. This means entering into close contact with the empirical knowledge of the campesinos (peasants) or country folk, listening to them and learning from them. So when a researcher and a campesino talk together, the researcher explains the scientific method and the campesino transmits his or her knowledge. It’s a situation of equals, with no superiority on the part of one or the other.
This empirical knowledge should not be idealised, of course but neither should it be underrated, as happened in the past. Up until now, the most interesting things that we’ve done have been to document this from the anthropological point of view and to open museums with collections of tools in them. If our ancestors were to see how we’ve made a fetish out of the hatchet that they sweated blood and tears with, they just wouldn’t be able to understand it at all.

At what point do you realise when you want to venture beyond empiricism and look for theoretical points of reference?

Coming to Barcelona was important for me. I came as an ornithologist due to my relationship with the Spanish Ornithological Society. In the Sixties, there used to be meetings at the Nuria restaurant, in the Rambla where Salvador Maluquer used to take part. I was familiar with his work. I was like Manelic from Terra Baixa (Main character of the Catalan play by Àngel Guimerà, who represents the innocence of a peasant before mundane town people) at those meetings: they were fascinated by me and I was by them. He would explain what he'd found in the forest and they'd get enraptured. I could have stayed in the country of course and become a kind of sherpa encyclopedia but contact with this group of thinkers and the degradation of the River Tordera made new question marks come up in my mind.

What was your experience of the degradation of the River Tordera?

Seeing the river die where I used to go swimming, the otters disappearing… I was stunned. When industry arrived at the beginning, people were enthusiastic and it gave them hope. Kids used to play with the waste like they do today in African countries. It didn't take long for me to realise that the situation was the result of a particular social model. I also learned to distinguish between bourgeois naturalism and committed naturalism that goes beyond the mere romantic vision of nature.

How did this personal evolution towards social activism express itself?

While I was studying to be a chemistry teacher, I organised weekend groups for factory workers to become aware of the environment. The next step was studying sociology at the Catholic Institute of Social Studies in Barcelona. That’s where I met Jordi Solé Tura, Carles Comín and a whole group of people who introduced me to the world of sociological analysis. I was an activist then in very radical movements. My goal above all was for workers to really get to know the environment and nature. On the other hand, I also worked in the Zoo as an animal trainer - as a keeper - and in the Zoology Museum. It was working in these institutions that confirmed my need for an academic training.

You call yourself a Rousseauian who has evolved a more realistic point of view. You’ve read the classics -Hegel, Goethe, Saint Agustí- and you’re also an admirer of the Teilhard de Chardin School. From the socio-environmental point of view, which authors do you feels are coming up with the most innovative ideas at the present time?
I find James Lovelock’s approach highly interesting, despite the criticisms that he receives from the neo-Darwinians. I obviously admire the work of Margalef but I believe that neo-Darwinism on its own is insufficient and so I therefore identify more with the ideas of Lovelock.

How do you rate the ideas of Fritjof Capra, the Californian sociologist?

Capra’s formulations are very interesting. I have a comment by Nelson Mandela engraved on my mind: “Martí Boada, there’s no mistaking that the great crisis facing humanity is the environmental crisis”. In that sense, Capra is tackling a key problem when he talks about the need for environmental literacy. I’m an agnostic although I believe that we’re dealing with an evangelical phenomenon: faced with a profound crisis, we need to build a tower that carries us up to heaven… a Tower of Babel that gathers a multitude of languages together to try and build something together thing.
The literacy approach is excessively neo-deterministic, however. Both neo-Darwinism, with Margalef as the outstanding representative here, and the neo-determinists expound that we are suffering a crisis that is leading us to a situation of collapse as a species. Their attitude is bereft of any kind of social commitment, they leave out the sociological aspects. I believe that human society has a more important role than that attributed to it by the neo-Darwinists and neo-determinists. At all events, Capra’s vision is very broad and his approach to the process of teaching people to be environmentally literate is post-educational, not pre-educational.

Let’s come down to earth again and talk about the crisis in the interior rural areas. What do you think are the causes for the situation that areas inland of the Eix Transversal (Transverse Highway) find themselves in?

The ultimate cause is globalisation of the economy. When we talk about the crisis of the inland rural areas, this isn't a local problem but a global one that is affecting all of the countries around the world. The decline of the primary industries can be explained by social evolution, by demand and also by the methods of production. So, for example, it’s cheaper to buy apples sent from Chile than those we produce in Urgell. It’s a paradox.

And the European Union spends a lot of money so that all the country farmers in Europe don’t disappear…

Right. Nevertheless, the more that the market gets deregulated, the less influential become the policies of the European Union. The decline of primary industry causes recession in rural areas together with the increasing political influence of the cities. The majority of the votes are concentrated in the large cities, so public utilities and budgetary expenditure in urban infrastructure receive top priority. In this context, there are insufficient resources to back up the innovative ideas, and they do exist, that come out of the interior rural areas.
The phenomenon of globalisation would therefore explain the collapse of the traditional primary industry economies. Taking into consideration that nothing has been done to stop this process, the result has been an inevitable exodus. There’s been a lack of political strategy to establish a settled population.

On the other hand, the population that has remained maintains a good standard of living, due in part to weekend tourism and second homes. Some areas are even beginning to regain population…

The interior rural areas certainly don’t have serious survival problems. There are a few tics with respect to the ageing population despite the fact that the latest trends indicate a process of rural recovery. This has been shown on Montseny where they’re reopening schools that were closed twenty years ago. There are slightly more young people now that have moved there for different reasons.

What new activities have emerged or been rediscovered?

Around 700 masíes or farmhouses in the Montseny area were closed between 1950-70. Since the 1980s, however, there’s been a slow process of recovery and reoccupation of farmhouses. Between 120-130 are now restaurants and around 40 are nature schools that have attracted some 200 young people to the area, most of them couples with some kind of further or higher education training. They live in the villages, in the farmhouses and they have a very different relationship with the environment to what the old inhabitants had. They’re even rediscovering traditions that had declined in the context of the news economies.
In Santa Marta (Viladrau), for example, they’ve rediscovered chestnuts traditional culture. These days, tourists don’t leave Viladrau without a bag of chestnuts. It’s a scattered industry but it’s starting to have an influence because it’s an activity that relates to the desire to reconnect with tradition, to organise fêtes and small local museums that all have their appeal and give a touch of identity and culture to the place.

The intentions are positive but isn’t there the risk of the interior rural areas becoming a kind of weekend garden?

The interior rural areas are turning into a garden but they still have many other functions that are fundamental for urban centres. As a source of energy, for example. We get electricity from the flooding of valleys like the Camarassa. The city leaves an ecological imprint that is expressed both globally and regionally.
One of the key factors in landscape modification has obviously been the change in the demand for energy. Man lived for centuries using just coal and wood; when the changes was made to other energy sources, substantial changes began to occur in the landscape.
On the other hand, the latest scientific research shows that we can’t go on with just a few three-wheeled ideas about the environment. Things are very complex. Contrary to what was believed, for example, the forests in Europe and North America absorb a lot more carbon dioxide from industrial emissions than the forests in the Amazon.

Apart from this environmental function, which is very important, everybody seems to agree on the state of abandonment of the forests in Catalonia…

Forest management has been abandoned and this has led them to be in a sad state of ruin. The forests have increased a lot: many mountain landscapes that were occupied by farmers in the 1960s are now forest cover. Moreover, if plans to manage and clear the forests are not put into operation, nature itself will do it in a very questionable way.

Managing the forests costs money, however, and the structure of land ownership in Catalonia makes things difficult…

The question of private property is a permanent debate. It’s a complex situation. Urban society is placing new pleasure and cultural demands on forested areas but the majority of landowners don’t have the resources to manage them. But you can’t incriminate the landowners, which is what has been done up until now. As a scientist with left-wing ideas, I’ve often defended them and this has created certain problems for me. A well-known naturalist magazine has even accused me of defending the interests of the timber companies. I’ve just become very close to what goes on in the forest and I’ve tried to understand the different points of view.
In the case of Catalonia, the figures are clear. 90% of the land is private property and 10% is accounted for by public ownership. That’s not the case in the rest of Spain.
The problem of ownership goes back to the times of Mendizabal. I don’t feel that it’s fair to incriminate the landowners. When it comes down to it, the forest landowners are bogged down in the misfortunes of semantics. There’s no business group that proclaims ownership. There wouldn't be so many problems if they were called agricultural entrepreneurs instead of forest landowners.

What’s the proportion of land in Catalonia covered with forest?

At the present time, forests cover around 60% of the land. And the forest cover is growing more every year. The country is turning into a warehouse full of cellulose and the greatest risk is forest fire. If we include the fact that construction is going on inside the forest for the first time in history, the risks are getting greater. No form of taming the land ever built in the forest before. The only exception was the charcoal burners who built incidental constructions.

What type of political action do you propose? Or has it already become a problem for Brussels?

I think that the Government here needs to understand that forest management is of top priority. It’s not something you can leave in the hands of vested interests: landowners, ecologists and building companies. It’s a much broader question: it amounts to the model of country that we want to have. Policies need to be applied that encourage management plans and support given to research to help us decide what we’re going to do with all this biomass that is accumulating. In fact, contrary to what we thought from the conservationist point of view, the increase in forest surface does not increase biological diversity but, on the contrary, it reduces it. Habitats have been lost, together with a large number of living organisms. The myth of the forest being untouchable is not desirable in the case of the Mediterranean area.

What species are better adapted to the new situation in Catalonia?

Those that have an ecological advantage, for example the species with a greater invasive capacity, especially certain conifers. This is the case with the Aleppo pine that colonises many areas that have been burnt or abandoned. The Aleppo pine is a very efficient invader. The common evergreen oak is also spreading.
You must consider, however, that forest landscapes are totally related to market demand. The cork oak has been successful since the beginning of the 19th century because of the Industrial Revolution in the cork industry. The bark of this species produces a large quantity subenin, a composite material that is highly valued in industry for gaskets. Subenin was fundamental in the colonisation of the cold areas in Canada and Scandinavia as insulation for buildings. And NASA still uses a gasket made of cork that is a material that they haven't been able to substitute. The cork industry made a lot of money at one time, and the workers formed a kind of workers' aristocracy. When overseas trade was opened up in the 18th century, chestnut trees became highly prized in the construction of ships that transported foodstuffs.

The timber in the forests in Catalonia doesn't have the same value that it used to have, though...

The productive function of the forest has slumped which has led to neglect and lack of interest. It's also true that the ownership of the forests has changed hands. I don't like how younger people in the industry are totally indifferent to what's going on in the forest. Young people in the forest industry hardly have any fight in them. Some of them just walk out while others put their faith in nurseries, mainly for gardening.

That's true. There's been a proliferation of nurseries by the roadside all over Catalonia...

The introduction of autochthonous plants is a very important aspect in the philosophy of public works. A restoration plan thus becomes vital in any public works project and it's this trend that explains the vast supply that exists.

The philosophy in interior rural areas is to search for tourism. Do you think this is a good alternative for generating wealth and establishing a settled population?

That would depend on the tourist model that you choose. There is tourism that has more of an impact and is aggressive, for example golf clubs, that are an excuse for creating urban infrastructure. Neither am I in favour of the initiatives to colonise high mountain areas, whether it be for adventure sports or ski resorts. These kinds of approach are often lacking in any kind of sustainable approach. We need to be watchful and very critical at the same time so that impact studies get included.

And eco-tourism?

The tertiarisation of rural areas through agrotourism and cultural tourism are encouraging, on the other hand. It's fundamental to establish ways to participate in this kind of initiative. They should listen to what the inhabitants have to say and their proposals should be taken into consideration. I think that our Ford-based society that is obsessed with accumulating and accumulating needs to advocate alternative approaches. Craft skills, for example, that use locally produced raw materials and highly specialised technology. The store of craftsmen, high quality gastronomy, the revival of local architecture, archaeology, bridges big and small, everything has its part to play in developing participating strategies that are inspired by Agenda 21 and adapted to a specific area. It's also very important to promote sustainable organic farming. It's sad to say this but every young person that settles in an interior rural area is saved from becoming a civil servant.

Population recovery in interior rural areas means the migration of highly qualified people from the urban environment to the rural one. That's a difficult decision to make, don't you think?

Of course it's difficult but some of the most innovative trends in rural areas have been stimulated by people from the city. From your neo-rurals who live in Pallars, to people from labour organisations in Badalona or Baix Llobregat that get into organic farming or work in nature schools. There were a lot of romantic young people in the Sixties but there were a lot of pragmatic ones as well.

Do you think that computers and Internet will play a role in helping to establish population settlement in rural areas?

There is already a slight exponential growth occurring in this process. Lots of people are working on-line and they live on farms or in villages in rural areas. This will help to demystify the farm. Such settings, with their high quality landscapes, are ideal for becoming the source of ideas. Different rural areas are being colonised, not necessarily by hippies but by enterprising digital individuals who will surely play an important role in the revival of rural areas •

Lluís Reales
 

Environmental legislation
Standards: The trees that prevent us from seeing the wood
Ignasi Doñate
1.  A country concerned about the woodlands

1.1  The territorial factor of the woodlands
According to data from the General Plan for Forestry Policies woodlands cover 61.1% of Catalonia, which is greater than the European Union which has 130 million ha of woodlands and represents 36% of its total area. Therefore when we talk about woodlands in Catalonia we are talking about the most representative territory of the country. Behind the woodlands management is really the territorial management of Catalonia which means that the forest management is a strategic element in the territorial management of the territory, population and natural resources of Catalonia.
The Catalan woodlands are rich in their diversity but it is also young forest composed of small trees. As a result of a number of factors the tree-covered area of Catalonia is increasing in accordance with the general trend in the Mediterranean. According to Ministry of Agriculture, Stockfarming and Fishing (DARP) the tree covered area in Catalonia increased by 19.8% between the years 1970 and 1990. The abandonment of the arable land are the key elements of this spontaneous increase in the tree covered areas, limited only by the serious forest fires of recent years.

1.2.  The low productivity of the sector
Whilst the woodlands cover the majority of the territory, the timberlands of Catalonia only give 1.9% of the agricultural production. The forestry products from Catalonia generated in 1996 1,030 million Pesetas of which 70% were timber, cork, firewood and the rest were wild mushrooms, pasture land, truffles and others. These 10,030 million was 1.9% of the agricultural production of Catalonia, or 0.08% of gross domestic product (A. Cerillo “La Vanguardia” 7/4/97).
The Catalan woodlands have a remarkable ecological diversity, but few are productive, and thus not competitive either because they are on steep slopes or because they are Mediterranean woodlands which are typically fragile and of low production. The lack of productivity is the principal factor for the abandoning of the activity and consequently the depopulation of the countryside. Although isolation, altitude, drought and snow are also involved but the general consensus is that the depopulation is due to the lack of productivity in the basic sector.
As a result of this depopulation, the majority of the country folk are out of the mainstream and have to take on such activities that do not provide adequate compensation. We cannot have rural Catalonia converted into a leisure area for the urban population and this occupation results in a loss of capital instead of providing the corresponding fair remuneration. As the days go by the woodlands are worked less, but on the other hand are more visited. Only twenty years ago the woodlands was an agricultural reserve, produced timber and firewood, a reserve for pasture, a reserve of capital, etc. and for this it could be said that they had a fundamental role. Today the woodlands are not worked.
1.3.  The low cost of the high environmental and social profits of the woodlands
The yield from the Catalan woodlands is not in their slipping productivity. The yield from the woodlands is not only derived from their production. The yield from the woodlands has to be mainly found, not in production but in the environmental benefits that are indiscriminately generated for the people: quality and quantity of water, quality of the air, quality of the countryside, soil erosion protection. Its productive aspect means including in the maintenance costs of the woodlands the profits they generate: quality/quantity of the water, the air, the soil, the countryside, nature conservation, leisure areas, etc.
These forest benefits attributable to the hard and effective work of the country folk are not adequately valued nor are they compensated for by the population in general who benefit from them. It is in this sense under the concept of “help” that is hidden the lack of evaluation of the work and the functions of forest owners. As Dr. Ramon Folch would say “the low cost of a high value”.
This is also how the complaint from the Unió de Pagesos (Peasant’s Union) should be understood: “The country folk in general are the principal conservers of nature by managing the countryside by their professional, agricultural, livestock and forest decisions and sculpturing and creating the countryside… The disappearance of the country folk will cause very negative effects on the territory: the disappearance and deterioration of rural and forest tracks which will make access difficult to forest fires and make immediate action against fire impossible, lack of watching over the territory, lack of water points, disappearance of natural firebreaks which are the cultivated areas, disappearance of social benefits (greener and more intensive in summer), vineyards, olive groves, almond trees, hazelnut trees, etc…lack of water channels, increase of soil erosion, growth of weeds, undergrowth and brambles on ex pastures, growth and connection of the woodlands which results in large fires” (Joan Cassajoana i Vives, Unió de Pagesos del Bages).
Currently costs are for the account of the owners without their being paid for the benefits they provide.

1.4.  Private ownership of the woodlands
One of the goals of managing woodlands is to make the environmental benefits and the public use of compatible with the private ownership of the woodlands. The Catalan woodlands are made up of  49,567 forest estates of which 77% is privately owned. 65% of this is of estates greater than 25 ha belonging to 8,542 people and the remaining 35% are small properties belonging to 41,115 people. The responsibility of forest management is for the owners in the first place.
The Consorci Forestal de Catalunya (Forest Consortium of Catalonia) states: “In a country where the majority of the woodlands are privately owned and with an indisputable system of open economy, the goal to achieve is not in technical aspects (e.g. the detection and extinction of fires) or biological aspects (description of our ecosystems) as we have used our limited resources in years gone by but in socio-political aspects” (Eduardo Rojas. “The Environmental Time” , No. 16).
The evolution of the forest regulations in Catalonia is, among other factors, the task of finding the best formula for co-operation between public ownership and the public institutions, making private management and public supervision compatible, optimising production profits without minimising the social and environmental benefits of the woodlands, the joint search to achieve a well balanced and simultaneous solution to the three functions that the woodlands should have: productivity, environmental and social.

2.  The alternative to integral management in the long term

2.1.  The alternative to “integral management”
Forest management has alternative systems: the system of timber production (financial gain) or the woodlands as a complex ecosystem with multiple financial and ecological functions (conservation of an ecologically valuable habitat). Some authors speak of the second option as an “integral forestry policy” characterised by its multiple functions: the adoption of measures that lead to “social and biologically stable structures that have a minimum social cost, distributed equitably and balanced which optimises the assets and services demanded by society from the woodlands in a permanent form” (Rojas, E. 1995).
In other words the alternative would be woodlands correctly managed which would be the equivalent of woodlands that conserve and improve the “forest quality” as identified by C. Ibero and N. Dudley (1995) by the exterior signs of forest authenticity, its state of health, producer of environmental benefits (genetic reserve which would serve to conserve and create soil, which protects against erosion….) and of socio-economic assets (other uses: cynegetics, leisure, science or education). The line of management installed would not be to increase the woodlands as this, on its own, is not an indication of environmental quality.
On the other hand achieving an mature forest implies a management task of 200 years. This undoubted fact means that forest management must necessarily be practicable and designed to extract from a specific forest the same quantity and quality of timber year after year.
In the long term this type of management would make it necessary to evaluate the environmental and social benefits of the forest and its reward would be the increase in capital value in the short and medium term of the business.

2.2.  Alternative uses as an alternative?
The authorities and owners are looking for new ways of making a profit from the woodlands, especially trying to assure better social acceptation of timber and other forest products in a highly competitive field because of products from Northern Europe. For this purpose the Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya (Technological Centre of Catalonia) was set up in Solsona.
To make the natural environment and the leisure and tourist activities compatible, whether as a help to capitalise the countryside or whether an assumption of the appreciation of natural sites, can in neither case be considered as an alternative to the forest problem. In addition, prior to starting this type of initiative it will be necessary to teach the rural population, make a study of each area, adequately classifying them according to their uses and regulating it. The use of natural areas for outdoor leisure activities and tourism leads to an indiscriminate activity which could result in a lower investment yield and degradation of the area.

3.  Forest legislation

Current forest legislation was set up by the Catalan forestry Law 6/1988 as a starting point that, as the scope of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia powers in forestry matter developed, substituted the Spanish law of Molins of June 8, 1957 and the remainder of the state forestry regulations, which can only be applied as basic regulations, which as such, cannot be contradicted by the Catalan regulations.
To the specific woodlands regulations there must be added  in order to complete the legislation the legislation which governs the natural spaces, the territorial and urban regulations, the hunting and fishing, water and other regulations. Despite the systematic consideration of that legislation with the forest legislation is a very difficult task because of the diversity of approaches and of the measures that different regulations apply.
The legislation is configured as a packet of sector regulations that are lacking in the unit conception of a systematically prepared complex of regulations. In this task of classifying the Pla Territorial General de Catalunya (Catalonia’s Territorial Planning) approved by the Law 1/1995 of March 16, was, as refers to the rural world, a lost opportunity to balance the management and uses of the territory. As a summary a Report on the Plan emitted by the Consell de Protecció de la Natura (Nature protection Council) states “damage has occurred to the natural and rural environment because of the differential treatment given by the PTG with the definition of the territorial uses”. To this end the Report summarises that “ the agricultural activity should merit a specific chapter as it has a structural role in the territory as a connection between various protected spaces, of environmental quality…one cannot forget the productive-financial aspect which in principle is the purpose of agricultural activity”. Thus one must conclude that the PTG has not brought the appropriate tools to the classifying of the country’s legislation. The treatment given to the rural environment is practically non-existent and the reference to the forest environment is almost anecdotal when it summarises that “harm to the forest environment does not come from agricultural activities but from excessive visits and the secondary effects of the atmospheric pollution”. Here is no reference to the lack of the sector’s profitability, to the balance of the productive, the social and environmental functions of our woodlands.

3.1.  The Catalan Forestry Law 6/1988
The Catalan Forestry law of October 19, 1988 was drawn up with a wide purpose, summarised in the first clause: “to establish the ordinance for the woodlands of Catalonia to ensure their conservation and to guarantee the production of raw materials, take appropriate advantage of renewable natural resources and maintain the conditions allowing the recreational and cultural use of them”.
This purpose, including the sustained parameters of the law, is dealt with but from a production point of view when this is not in the objects of the Law: “Promote and improve in a continuous manner the socioeconomic function of the woodlands, promote forestry and the activities of primary transformation of forest products… improve the profitability of the woodlands”. With reference to all this we can see how the productive orientation has not achieved to redress by itself alone the lack of profitability in the Catalan woodlands, which has caused their abandonment at the same time as the abandonment of certain agricultural activities. To what should we attribute this malfunctioning of the regulation? The law foresaw objectives which would presume the rationalisation of forest production, such as the fight against the reduction of the existing forest area, the encouragement to the collaboration between local administrations, the encouragement to form syndicates and collaboration between the sectors involved in forest production, encouragement for research, experimenting with and the formation of producers or managers of forest activities”. These positive and indisputably necessary objectives exist but there are no resources to achieve the objectives in the short, medium and the long term nor the instruments for their application.
But, above all, there is the clear lack of the assuming of the environmental forest functions and a lack of the ordering of their social function which has resulted in the current social and governmental unanimity in respect to the insufficiency of public and private measures to avoid the massive abandonment of the forest sector. In the State a new mountain law is being drawn up under the premise of the requirement of a radical change in the forest legislation.
The law established a forest concept that has been considered to wide in respect to its functioning. This concept, whilst permitting the application of the woodlands law to a variety of rural lands, is not the most appropriate from the perspective of the classification and decision about the uses which has resulted in its technical modification when drawing up the Forestry Inventory of Catalonia.
Following the line of the Forestry Law of 1932, timber activities have to have by law a licence prior to start up except those properties that have approved Planning Projects or Technical Plans. In accordance with the Order of July 16, 1991 forest activity for domestic use is also excepted.
The Forestry Law has not been modified in the more than two years that it has been in existence, except for adjustments to the law to comply with the requirements of Law 30/92 of Administrative Procedures brought out by the Legislative Decree 10/1994 of July 26.

3.2.  Public instruments for forest management
The law set up as a basic management instrument, the Plans for Forest Development placing at the highest level the “General Plan of Forest Policy” drawn up to produce an integral forest policy by classifying woodlands and determining their use.
The General Plan of Forest Policy of Catalonia, passed in 1994, has the purpose - in accordance with the Forestry Law 6/1988 - to govern the woodlands and make the conservation of the natural environment compatible with the multiple use of the woodlands. The plan should serve to qualify the woodlands and determine their uses. By just reading the Index to the Plan we can foresee that it only considers the functions of direct production forest and the encouragement of industries arising out of the use of forest resources and forest activities. In this sense one again finds the lack of the integral function of the plan, which no reference of importance to the environmental and social functions of the woodlands which is seemed to be reserved for the general legislation of the Plan for Areas of Natural Interest in Catalonia (PEIN) which whilst it could mention this function lacks application to the territory in general.
The General Plan foresees the drawing up of the Forest Production Plans that affect different territorial units by dividing the territory into eight large parts that are sometimes subdivided. In total there are foreseen 16 Forest Production Plans and in accordance with which the Planning Projects and the Forest Improvement and Management Technical Plans have to be drawn up and which will be considered mandatory for woodlands for public and protection use.
The regulation of forest policies has a more specific planning expression in the Planning Projects and in the Forest Improvement and Management Technical Plans (PTGMF). The general instructions for the drawing up, approval and review of the PTGMF plans to be applied to private woodlands in Catalonia and are summarised in the Order of June 10, 1991 from the Ministry of Agriculture, Stockfarming and Fishing (DARP) and in the Order of July 20, 1994.
The planning activity, fundamental in all policy developments, applied to the private sector has inclined, in the case of the Catalan woodlands, towards a markedly productive concept in the short term, without taking into account the real great variety of the woodlands’ functions and the specific problems of Mediterranean woodlands of low productivity and extremely fragile.
The Forest Plan of Catalonia will provide 2,000 million pesetas a year in subventions. The major part of this, 1,600 million, will be to encourage the replanting of woodlands in abandoned arable fields according to information from the EU. For the cleaning and replanting of burnt areas only 400 million will be applied. Attention should be given to expert opinion about the “cleaning” of woodlands as, if the “cleaning” consists of removing the undergrowth this is a real assault on the woodlands. For this reason cleaning activities should be limited to removing elements foreign to the woodlands.

3.2.2.  The Catalan forest inventory
In accordance with the precepts of the Forestry Law and on the orders of the DARP and of the Ministry of Environment, the Forest Activities and Ecological Research Centres has just finished the Catalan Forest Inventory which not only includes desometric measures but also considers the woodlands as an ecosystem, which permits projecting their growth in the medium term of 20 to 30 years. The inventory should have been the base for the General Plan of Forest Policy of Catalonia but the complexity of the data to be included and necessity to give it a general Plan to guide the preparation of the management and production plans meant that the the General Plan of Forest Policy was approved well before the inventory was finished. Unlike the Spanish inventory, the Catalan inventory when discussing the wooded area makes explicit reference to the existence of trees. With this criterion the inventory concludes that the forest area of Catalonia is stable if one takes into account the loss of woodlands as a result of fires and the gain by the abandonment of cultivated areas. On the other hand, according to the Spanish inventory the Catalan woodlands are increasing and it concentrates on the quantity and diameter of the trees and the quantity of timber.

3.2.3.  The Forest Ownership Centre
Included in the plan for the management of private woodlands is the creation of “The Forest Ownership Centre” which has the purpose of regulating timber production and the promotion and improvement of the privately owned woodlands and pastures. The definition of the functions of “The Forest Ownership Centre” is contained in the Decree 358/1989 of December 19.
Currently the Centre, after the measures arising out of the serious forest fires in 1998 and with the necessity to encourage greater participation from the private sector, has the idea of setting up a “private woodlands agency” as per a projected decree which will mean that it will be an autonomous organisation of an administrative character that could control the timber production of the private woodlands, represent the owners in front of the authorities, draw up timber production plans and make proposals and suggestion on forest matters. Within the Centre it is planned to create a “Forest Advisory Council” as well as a “Forest Fund For The Private Woodlands Of Catalonia” which will be funded basically from taxes and fines for infractions that affect privately owned woodlands.

3.2.4.  The minimum forest unit
The minimum forest unit as foreseen in the forestry law will be determined by Decree 35/1990 of January 23, will be 25 ha. In accordance with this criterion estates smaller than this cannot be split up and therefore buildings for agricultural purposes will or will not be authorised.

3.2.5.  The catalogues
As foreseen in the Forestry Law, public use woodlands have to be included in the Catalogue of Public Utility Forests which, in accordance with the Order of the DARP of November 26, 1993 will consist of a cartographic and photographic file and a register.

3.2.6.  Subventions
The subventions to forest activities will not have the same weight as those for agriculture. Their concept is more and more disputed when requested by the private sector not for the setting up of a “forest activity with subventions” but for contributions to the social and environmental functions which the woodlands provide for the country.
The subvention policy is basically that followed by the European Union as complementary measures to the PAC for the replanting of trees in agricultural land in order to avoid erosion and to improve the hydraulic functions of the woodlands. Lately, replanting programmes have been affected by the finance problems of the European Union arising from more Community requests for access to the financing programmes.
The objects of the subventions are currently:
3.2.6.1. The encouragement of planned management of privately owned woodlands as established by the Order of July 31, 1990 which foresees the granting of subventions, preferential access to loans from the Catalan Institute for Agrarian Credit (ICCA) and the establishment the most favourable nominal interest rates.
3.2.6.2. The encouragement of forest investments in agricultural businesses and the development and use of woodlands in rural areas as laid down in the Order of June 29, 1993 later modified by the Order of May 14, 1996 of the DARP. In accordance with this decree the Spanish Decree 378/1993 of March 12 was applicable and which develops the Community regulation which established a Community system of subventions to forest measures in agriculture in accordance with the five year programme (1993-1997) for Catalonia.
3.2.6.3. The work of conserving and regenerating cork trees and the protection of cork, foreseen in the Decree 42/1989 of March 22, consists of granting a subsidy for the interest arising from loans from financial institutions.

3.2.7.  Measures against forest diseases
The prevention and fight against forest diseases is legally understood to be the application of measures conceived for the prevention and fight against the diseases and included in the Decree 21/1991 of January which also sets out a series of measures against the use of pesticides.

3.2.8.  Forest funds
3.2.8.1. The Forest Fund of Catalonia, as foreseen in the Forestry Law and regulated by the Decree 357/1989 of December 19, the Catalan forest funds are included in a set of measures for the prevention of forest fires and for the replanting of land affected by the fires.
3.2.8.2. The forest improvement funds. In accordance with article 55 of the Forestry Law and via the Decree 377/1996 of December 2 which regulates the management of these forest improvement funds are for the conservation and maintenance of public use woodlands owned by local authorities. Public owners are obliged to invest 15% of the profits obtained by the business in the regulation and improvement of their woodlands. Here profits are considered to be the income generated from timber concessions, use permits and permits in general which arise from the public use woodlands. The destination of the funds is for the financing of the annual programme for forest improvement.

4. The regulations for the prevention and extinction of forest fires

4.1. We talk about the woodlands when they burn
The far too often occurrence of large forest fires has resulted in the impossibility of the woodlands naturally regenerating and is causing irreversible losses. The forecast for 1999 is not very optimistic because of the drought, the lack of water reserves and for the world wide forecasts of the repetition this year of 8 to 10 large meteorological phenomena which will bring disasters to those countries lacking the minimum infrastructures to deal with large climatic phenomena. We talk about the weather. We also talk about the woodlands but only when they burn.
Certainly 90% of forest fires are caused, intentionally or not, by human activity. For this reason there should be a huge campaign about the public value of the woodlands, an in depth campaign for environmental education. This social value of the woodlands is the base for the important assignment of public resources for maintaining and improving the woodlands. Therefore, the closing off of the woodlands and the denial of access to the natural environment is not a positive step because of its antisocial character and, anyway, further encourages the abandonment of the woodlands. Certainly access should be regulated but never forbidden.

4.2.  Measures for the prevention and extinction of forest fires
Legal measures for the prevention of forest fires were basically set out in the Decree 64/1995 from the DARP which summarises the contents of the Spanish regulations about forest fires Law 81/68 of December 6and its Regulation approved by Decree 3769/1972 of December 23, the Catalan Forestry Law 6/88 and the Civil Emergencies Protection Plan for forest fires in Catalonia (INFOCAT) approved by the Government on September 29, 1994.
In the Forestry Law the Forest Defence Groups (ADF) are stated to be legal entities formed by forest owners, town Halls, associations whose objects are to protect nature and professional agricultural organisations. The ADF, duly registered, can ask for help from the DARP which would consist of subventions for ADF activities, insurance cover for personal risks and the possibility to formalise agreements with the DARP for special actions.
The Decree 64/1996 of March 7 sets out “safety zones” - areas that are free from all types of vegetation that could provoke fires - and “protection zones” - areas without brushwood and cleaned forest - as well as special measures with respect to factors related to fires: urbanisations, dwellings and farms, industrial and service businesses, power lines, roads, tips, recreational areas, forest activities, controlled burning, etc. The Decree has specific rules about the time of the year, with prohibitions and special authorisations. All fire-associated activities need authorisation and are strictly prohibited from March 15 to October 15. Finally, Decree 64/1995 sets out a series of measures for the self-protection of the various buildings in woodlands.
With respect to the periodical and selective cutting of the vegetation around power line areas for the prevention of forest fires, Decree 268/1996 of July 23 sets out the basic parameters for this as well as the precise concepts to be taken into account.
Finally one has to take into account the fire prevention plans in specially protected natural areas as established by Decree 378/1986 of December 18 and the specific prevention measures that can be applied in each season in accordance with the Forestry Law.
As a result of the forest fires in 1998, specific subventions were established for the replanting of the woodlands affected, clearing the dead vegetation, the drafting of the PTGMF and the replacement of the assets of the ADFs. With these subventions it was hoped to relieve the despair of the rural world about these disasters which were proof of the abandonment of the forest sector and the lack of alternatives available to make rural life viable. Specific subventions were established from the ICCA for the replacement and/or reconstruction of the farms affected by the fires that broke out in July 1998. The legislative measures were:
• a)  The plan for the cleaning and clearing up of the areas affected by the fire (DOGC 2628 of 24/4/98):
• b)  The Order of April 15 which set up subventions for the purchase of agricultural machinery and equipment as well as the incorporation of new technologies. The subventions were from 15 to 40% depending on whether the area was considered prejudiced or seriously affected by the fires (DOGC 2629 of 29/4/98).
• c)  The Order of 22/9/98 published in the DOGC No. 2729 which established a series of extraordinary subventions for the replanting of the woods affected which consisted in the clearing of the dead vegetation, making use of the trees and turning the non-saleable ones into fences evenly distributed along the borders of the estates affected. The subventions were from 40,000 PTAs/ha to 108,000 PTAs/ha according to the work to be carried out. The applicant could ask for a loan up to 50% of the subvention from the ICCA. Subventions were also for the revision of technical plans from PTAs. 1,500 to PTAs. 3,500 according to the areas. The subvention for the purchase of replacement of materials affected by the fires from the ADF was 100%.

4.3.  Fire prevention and extinction services
The regulation of the fire prevention and extinction services corresponded to the Law 5/1994 of may 4. This general law regulated the most relevant aspects of the actions and measures to be used in the prevention and extinction of fires. Municipalities with more than 200,000 inhabitants had to provide a service for the avoidance and extinction of fires. The Autonomous Government could provide such service if the Municipality was unable with subsequent payment by the Municipality. The law created a special contribution for the insurance companies that issued policies covering fire risks and the volunteer firemen were attached to the Catalan Home Office when on duty.

5.  New management instruments for a valued forest

A new forest management dealing with quality is one of the inevitable objects. A social evaluation of the woodlands as fragile and valuable area requires global treatment as fruit of a social plan based on the environmental benefits that they supply. Everyone wants a kind of mosaic countryside that combines woodlands separated by cultivated fields and pastures. Everyone wants a fire prevention policy. These objectives cannot be achieved without top class forest management, but it is also agreed that appropriate forest management is insufficient to prevent depopulation, that an appropriate forest management is not sufficient to prevent forest fires.
It is not only a management problem. There is a consensus, and I am saying nothing new, about the necessity for a policy with a wider scope than the current one, with a more ample spectrum, a policy that includes strategies to achieve a better territorial and environmental balance. Many of the forest problems come from factors unconnected to them: tips, power lines, infrastructures…
It is necessary to have responsible forest management by forest owners and a much wider forest policy which in a specific way would influence a green fiscal policy which could compensate the environmental benefits arising from proper forest management. Public compensation to private management and a favourable fiscal policy are the instruments that the Authorities have in order to recognise the social and environmental functions of forest managers. Compensation not tied into the production of assets but to the environmental and social productivity, often inversely proportional to the capacity for the production of timber, firewood and other forest products.
The agricultural unions also remember this when they tell us that the agricultural and forest policy needs more “farmers’ common sense”: improvement in the measures accompanying the PAC, an appropriate structure policy, favouring regional policies on homogenous areas, that gives priority to family businesses, that the profile of an activity with poor subventions be done away with in order to proceed towards an activity properly valued for the environmental and social benefits that it generates •
 

News
Sustainable Mobility Day
Johanna Cáceres Terán

“Sustainable Mobility Day” is the slogan of the first official day dedicated to sustainable mobility held in Catalonia. On the 29th April, which falls on a working Thursday, the Catalan people will have to substitute their private vehicles for alternative forms of transport in order to get to their places of work, study or leisure, as circulation in the city and town centres will be restricted. Far from becoming an annoying anecdote, the organisers of the day hope that this restriction will be a first step towards consolidating a more rational way of using cars: towards a more sustainable mobility model.
On the other hand, and by taking the cars off the roadways, the day will allow for the liberation of space so that the street can assume other functions apart from serving as that of a track for traffic. For this reason, the day will also have the objective of allowing citizens to rediscover the street as a meeting place, a place of interchange and play, in short, the citizen should be the one to occupy his own city.
Few are the voices that now doubt the negative effects, both environmental and sanitary, of traffic in large cities. Among the former are both atmospheric and acoustic contamination, and among the latter respiratory and stress problems. Apart from this, it is also worth mentioning obstruction and the lack of parking, traffic jams, automobile accidents, as well as the enormous environmental impact created by the roadway infrastructure. The result is a considerable worsening in the quality of life of residents in urban nuclei, as well as for those who work there.
When all is said and done, it highlights the need to instil a change in the actual proprietor of the vehicle, a change which has already begun in various European cities, and which has begun taking shape in Catalonia as a result of preventive initiatives from different entities and civil platforms on the one hand, and through administration petitions on the other (for example, the habitants of Badalona have already been organising a car-free day for the past 3 years). This sensibility towards the problem became obvious when, last November, the Association for the Promotion of Public Transport, the Friends of the Bike, Barcelona by Foot and community associations and syndicates proposed the organisation of a restricted mobility day in Catalonia, and the institutional reaction has not put the matter on hold: the Town and City Network for Sustainability decided to give the matter the necessary logistical support and the Ministry of the Environment has made the initiative its priority right from the beginning.

Cars yes, but with sense

Current traffic problems should not be blame on the actual car, but rather on the owner. For this reason, day is for sustainable mobility rather than a car free day. In effect the private vehicle has a function as a transport method; it is another option, but should not be, as it is now, the option which takes up the most space, which generates the most noise and which creates the most pollution, given that, all in all, it only serves to transport some third of the population. The transport problem is root, therefore, of the indiscriminate use of the private vehicle, and what the day strives to promote is a more rational use: make use of collective transport, bicycles or walking by foot whenever possible. What will all this achieve?
In the first instance, a great energy saving will be achieved: a car journey consumes four times more energy than collective transport, therefore, a reduction in private car journeys will noticeably reduce Catalonia's contribution to greenhouse effect gas emissions. Secondly, in Paris, for example, the average transport velocity was between 25-30 Km in the 70's, it is currently some 10 km/h, that is to say, that the more vehicles on the road the less smooth the flow of traffic. Thirdly, the enjoyment of urban space will be more balanced: in Barcelona no more than 25% of journeys are carried out in private vehicles, therefore, the car is far from being the transport medium of excellence. Despite this, this minority occupies 65% of public space.
In fact, each car takes up some 10,5 m2 of roadway in Barcelona, while a pedestrian no more than 3,5 m2 of the footpath. The correction of this imbalance in the occupation of public space, and the substitution of the presence of the car in the city for that of the pedestrian, constitutes one of the main objectives of the day. It does not, therefore, deal with penalising the car, rather with that of returning the city to the pedestrian. As it is cited in the book Eines per a una gestió municipal cap a la sostenibilitat (Tools for managing towns towards sustainability), edited by the Network of Towns and Cities for Sustainability, "Urban space is not a roadway destined to absorb a wave of cars, neither is it exclusively a pedestrian walkway. That which characterises urban space is its complexity and its function of fulfilling multiple activities (it is a meeting place, a place of play, of shopping, of walking and driving, and it is an element of identification for its inhabitants).

A place to live, and not a road network

The sensation that the rhythm of the city is governed by transit, and that its intensification causes a deterioration in the quality of life, is shared by the majority of urban inhabitants. For example, according to the survey carried out last year by the Barcelona Town Hall, 61% of Barcelona people believe that priority is given to private cars over people and that the three problems of the city which are seen as most important are of an environmental kind, as well as those related with vehicles: traffic/parking, cleanliness and pollution/noise.
This "discontent" has been evident in similar experiences developed in France and Italy, whereby in a referendum held in Bologna in 1984, 70% of drivers were in favour of reducing transit in the city centre. Measures taken since then have ensured that traffic has been reduced by 60%, and Bologna has become an example of good practice at a European level. Other Italian cities have, for years, also imposed restricted circulation in historical nuclei: Sienna, Florence, Rome, Milan..
In France, the Minister for the Environment, last year announced the celebration of the first car-free day ("To the city without my car?"). The event was held on the 22nd of September and involved the participation of 34 municipalities, Paris among them. The assessment of the citizens was very positive: 85% considered the day to be a good idea, and 56% were in agreement with repeating the day at least once a week. It was enough to say that the change in the environmental quality of the participating towns and cities was more than notable: in restricted traffic areas, polluting omissions were reduced by half, and noise levels fell from between 50% and 75%. The success of the day has resulted in a proposal being made this year for the institutionalisation of a European day, starting in the year 2000.
Like these cases, the Catalan day has not been proposed as an experiment, rather as a pilot test, a means of testing that could be carried out in terms of improving urban mobility. It is therefore not conceived as a punctual and anecdotal activity, but rather as a first step towards implementing long-lasting initiatives which will truly and effectively allow the car to be left at home, today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the next...
 

The ecology of leisure

“Tots. Quaderns d’Educació
Ambiental” returns, now with computer support

Some years ago the Unesco Centre of Catalonia began the publication of an environmental educational magazine published in four versions: Catalan, Spanish, French and English. The respective titles were “Tots”, “Todos”, “Tous” and “All of Us”. Its objective was to compile a collection of environmental educational magazines that would deal with basic topics, offering a general exposure of the problems, the positive behaviours and new experiences of various places around the world.
Following a period without the magazine being published, in 1998 it began to be published again, but this time taking advantage of new technologies. Now "Tots" can be located on the Internet, even though at present time it is only available in the Catalan and English versions. At first, the magazine adheres to the same format as the paper version, even though the idea is that it will gradually acquire a design more suited to its diffusion medium. In any case, the telematic network has made it possible to publish it again as the electronic system has eliminated the cost of printing and the significant budget involved in the mailing out of the publication.
“Tots”, a bimonthly publication, is addressed to all those interested in environmental education, but is of use mainly in countries where these problems are more frequent and where it is very important to diffuse educational tools and new experiences. It is true that in many of these countries telematic networks are not very widespread. However, from the Unesco Centre of Catalonia, they are working in order that the magazines reach those people that can apply the contents, or that can see to its posterior diffusion via other means to the maximum number of people possible. It is also forecast, when possible, to revive the Spanish and French versions.
The volumes of "Tots" in electronic edition deal with the following topics: Atmospheric pollution (16), the Islands (17), Business (18), Ecodesign (19), Environmental economics (20) and Sustainability indicators (21). Both versions of the magazine can be consulted at the following Websites: http://www.tots.net and http://www.allofus.net.
 

Objective: The Antarctic. Diary on board of an oceanographic campaign
Joandomènec Ros
Empúries, Barcelona, 1998, 293 pages.

The Antarctic plays a very important role in the world of research. Researchers from various fields carry out annual campaigns to study both the characteristics of the sixth continent, as well as all that which could provide clues to facts which affect the planet as a whole.
In addition to the usual researchers in such campaigns, from time to time there are those who have the privilege to travel to the Antarctica engaging on specific research. And of these, there are those who, luckily, have the zeal to publish an account of their work. Such has been the case of Joandomènec Ros, University Professor of Ecology at the University of Barcelona, who apart from his extensive scientific and educational journey, has maintained an active dedication to scientific diffusion.
This book deals with the impressions which come over an investigator who, for the first time, as he himself puts it, has the pleasure and the privilege to set foot on the white continent, as well as the characteristics of the scientific campaign, survival in harsh conditions, what this particular research teaches us, as well as other more general considerations on research, society and the environment. Various graphics and photos complement the book, which, for its own interest and subject matter has aroused much expectation among the general public.
 
 

The Environment: a civilising crisis.
Martí Boada i Anna Zahonero
La Magrana, Barcelona, 1998, 247 pages.
There are many books which deal with the environment, including very diverse themes and levels. However, there are always the few that deal, in a concise and clear manner, with the main challenges which we are faced with today, the way in which to deal with them and the manner in which environmental concerns help to change society. The authors of this work deal with all these, and if indeed it is mainly directed towards the educational world, its also contains some content matter which should not be limited to youngsters and teachers, rather it is an attractive and interesting read for the general public.
The authors deal with various problems, from both a Catalan and world wide perspective: residues, resources, the role of companies, the urban environment, biological diversity, the transformation of the countryside, environmental history, etc... The authors finish the work with various reflections on environmental thinking and education, which they consider to be a tool for social change. The book comes complete with a commented bibliography -which offers an aid that goes far beyond that of a simple referenced work, and a list of addresses of interest, which includes research centres, ecological groups, Non Governmental Organisations and various entities and companies related to the environment and environmental education. The two appendixes, therefore, increase the utility of this work.
 

Become human. The singularity  of man and evolution
Ian Tattersall
Edicions 62, Barcelona, 1998, 286 pages.
Despite the fact that many people fail to accept it, the human species is just one more among the various animal species. It is obvious though, that we have some very special characteristics and have undergone an extraordinary development. However, when it comes to studying the reasons why our species have these characteristics, we cannot think that this suddenly came about and in a different way to the rest: all species derive from a process of evolution.
In this fascinating book, the author explains how those characteristics which have most separated us from the rest of species, including our closest, came about. In what way have we acquired the features which have made us human? The study of fossils, the comparison between primates and hominidae, the meticulous observation of cave paintings, genetic data, anthropological studies, all related, allow for us to make a composition of the process which has let to the appearance of the human species. The only species, in fact, that can write books on the way in which they have appeared and evolved. The work of Tattersall is one of the most interesting books of scientific diffusion which has appeared in the past few years and will fascinate all those that are interested in the mysteries of biological and cultural evolution. •
 
 

Environment and Technology.
UPC (Polytechnics University of Catalonia) Environmental Guide.
Several authors
Edicions Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 1998, 304 pages.

The UPC was the first Catalan University to become completely environmental. This not only involved the introduction of environmental concepts to all areas of activity –waste treatment, the design of buildings, energy saving, but also included the environmental issue in all activities and promoted interdisciplinary environmental research. This was the case whether you be studying construction engineering or information technology or automation. One would finish his studies understanding the role his activity played on the environment.
Now this book has been published. Despite the title, it is far more than a mere guide and holds interest for a much wider audience of readers than simply teachers and students of the UPC. In 23 telematic ambits which cover all areas of polytechnic study, the work deals with those issues which affect each discipline from the point of view of the environment. The different chapters offer global visions, specific issues such as waste water, agriculture and environmental views of diverse specialities: navigation, automation, microelectronics, mining, materials, information technology etc. A very complete book which will undoubtedly be regarded as a work of reference. •
 

Mind over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives
Gary Gardner and Payal Sampat
Worldwarch Institute, Washington, 1998, 60 pages.
With each passing day, we use more and more devices and appliances and this, in turn, implies the use of increasing materials of diverse characteristics. This book begins by asking us to imagine that every morning a lorry were to dump all the materials we use, except for food and fuel, in front of our own homes. A prospect few of us would find funny, yet would allow us to wallow in the quantity and type of materials which we waste every day of our modern lives.
This work, which is number 144 of the "Worldwatch Papers", offers a brief, yet wide, exposition of the impact of materials on the atmosphere and makes various proposals for a more rational use of these materials. It is not a question of denouncing the comforts of progress, rather one of making sure that progress has minimal negative effects on the atmosphere. Both the use of primary materials and the destruction of materials that are in decline, are two very important issues of today. This work contains numerous bibliographical references, as well as a series of tables on current materials consumption -particularly in the United States, future projections and new proposals for a reduction in usage. •

X.D.

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