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Assessing forest governance in Albania

In the last 20 years, Albania has transferred the ownership and the responsibility of the management of 80% of forest area from central government to local government. The process was part of a wide decentralization reform aiming to tackle the challenges related to illegal logging activities, weak institutions, and capacities, unclear laws and regulations, frequent reforms in forest administration, high sector informality etc. Due to decentralization forest governance involve two levels of government and a range of stakeholders with different interests (local communities, forest owners, private sector, etc.). Although the reforms are under implementation, there is a lack of assessments, to analyze the governance challenges for the sector. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide an assessment of the status of forest governance in Albania, using a comprehensive analytical framework developed by FAO and PROFOR. The framework is based on three columns (i) policy, legal, institutional and regulatory frameworks, (ii) planning and decision-making processes and (iii) implementation enforcement and compliance. A set of 84 indicators, considered to be relevant for Albania, has been chosen out of 130 indicators proposed by PROFOR. The assessment is carried out through a survey, with a cross-section of 30 experts from various forest-related institutions (state and non-state). The results show that forest governance in Albania is far from good forest governance, despite some positive efforts. The reasons for this are no clear set of policy directions, conflicting or confusing laws, complex forest law and bylaws, no secure access to forest resources by local communities, low capacities of government (central and local) and non-government stakeholders, lack of transparency and accountability etc.