Evaluación cualitativa de la participación pública de propietarios de tierras comunales en Galicia (España)

Abstract

The involvement of society in decisions relative to land use planning is essential to accomplish sustained and reliable solutions. In the public participation process for the elaboration of a Forest management Plan in an area of the region of Galicia (NW Spain), one of the collectives with a higher level of participation were the Common Forest Land (Montes Vecinales en Mano Común, MVMC) owners' communities. MVMC are collective private ownership systems embracing approximately one third of Galicia's forest lands. In order to improve the comprehension of this collective's attitudes, an analysis was made regarding how they participate (or not) in the management of their lands. To do that, an approach based on the Grounded Theory from Glaser & Strauss (1967) was used to build an emergent theory from the study and interpretation of data collected by personal interviews performed during the participative process. The surveyed communities were classified regarding their degree of participation in the Forest Management Plan, and also the level of management displayed: Very active, active, and passive communities. The main finding was that the higher active communities aim to dynamize their management due to: their multifunctional perspective for MVMC, and the startup of new models of exploitation, the technical and administrative support of public authorities, and the expectative of their participation in the forest plan and the synergy in the management associated to the collective cooperation of all the community. On the other hand, the lack of dynamism of the most passive communities is due to a irresponsible management by the community together with the acknowledgement of a conflictive identity with their lands due to both physical and administrative problems. Such personal, social and cultural factors are interdependent with the future application of effective policies by the region's policymakers.