Forest Land Ownership Change in Belgium

The European COST Action FP1201 FOREST LAND OWNERSHIP CHANGES IN EUROPE: SIGNIFICANCE FOR MANAGEMENT AND POLICY (FACESMAP) aims to bring together the state-of-knowledge in this field across Europe and can build on expertise from 30 participating countries. Drawing on an evidence review across these countries, the objectives of the Action are as follows: (1) To analyse attitudes and constraints of different forest owner types in Europe and the on-going changes (outputs: literature survey, meta-analyses and maps). (2) To explore innovative management approaches for new forest owner types (outputs: case studies, critical assessment). (3) To study effective policy instruments with a comparative analysis approach (outputs: lit-erature survey, case studies, policy analyses). (4) To draw conclusions and recommendations for forest-related policies, forest management practice, further education and future research. Part of the work of the COST Action is the collection of data into country reports. These are writ-ten following prepared guidelines and to a common structure in order to allow comparisons across the countries. They also stand by themselves, giving a comprehensive account on the state of knowledge on forest ownership changes in each country. The common work in all countries comprises of a collection of quantitative data as well as quali-tative description of relevant issues. The COUNTRY REPORTS of the COST Action serve the following purposes:
• Give an overview of forest ownership structures and respective changes in each country and insight on specific issues in the countries;
• Provide data for some of the central outputs that are planned in the Action, including the literature reviews;
• Provide information for further work in the Action, including sub-groups on specific topics.
A specific focus of the COST Action is on new forest owner types. It is not so much about “new forest owners” in the sense of owners who have only recently acquired their forest, but the in-terest is rather on new types of ownership – owners with non-traditional goals of ownership and methods of management. For the purpose of the Action, a broad definition of “new forest owner types” was chosen. In a broad understanding of new or non-traditional forest ownership we in-clude several characteristics as possible determinants of new forest owners. The following groups may all be determined to be new forest owners: (1) individuals or organizations that previously have not owned forest land, (2) traditional forest owner categories who have changed motives, or introduced new goals and/or management practices for their forests, (3) transformed public ownership categories (e.g., through privatisation, contracting out forest management, transfer to municipalities, etc.), and (4) new legal forms of ownership in the countries (e.g. new common property regimes, com-munity ownership), both for private and state land.