In the framework of the RobinWood Plus project was organized an International Conference on sustainable forest management in Harghita county, Romania, on 11-12 January 2011. The invited speaker at the conference was László Borbély, Minister of Environment and Forests, Romania. Among the participants at the conference were project partners, mayors, president of Harghita County Council, Parliament representative, Secretary of State, Minister and several interested specialists in the theme of the project.
The event was opened by Mr. Borboly Csaba, president of Harghita County Council. He emphasized the fact that the main objective of the RobinWood project is useful experience exchange and based on this our region's population has a lot to learn from our partners, because the years before 1989 brought us in a disadvantageous position from forest management point of view, too. After the revolution due to majority's desire to earn wealth fast and easily drove to the devastation of forests. But also there is a sense of change in the management of properties due to a bigger attention given to good shareholders associations - said the president of Harghita County Council. He added that „although forest management is not in the county council's attributions, it still helps and motivates the international collaboration in this domain, because Harghita county's richest source is the forest. With its effective management, the population's living standard could be improved and the forest management could be the region's development engine. It is an honour for Harghita County Council that there is a possiblity to develop a collaboration with such partner regions in which the development of forest management, especially based on property relations' experience, was unbroken - said Borboly Csaba.
Tánczos Barna, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development also welcomed the participants. He said that the represented ministry is also interested in the project's success, because it's objective is the population's living standard improvement, this is why Mr. Tánczos expressed his congratulation regarding Harghita county's participation in this project.
The INTERREG IV C "Robinwood PLUS" is a Miniprogramme between Liguria Region (Italy, project leader) and Regional Council of Limousin (France) Regional Council of Kainuu (Finland), Harghita County Council (Romania), Calabria Region (Italy).
The theme is FORESTRY as key resource for development, environmental protection and improvement of life quality.
Main objective of the project is the promotion of the multifunctional role of forests as engine for economic development, environment protection and improvement of quality of life in rural areas.
The project officially started in January 2010 and will have a total duration of 48 months, up to December 2013. The total amount provided is € 3,063,463.56 Euros partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and partly co-financed by each participating partners.
The conference held on 11th of January 2011 included interesting and useful presentations, as following:
"Forest planning in the context of 2013-2017 policies", held by László Borbély, Minister of Environment and Forests;
Presentation of the „Ruract Network", held by Marc Horvat, representative of the Regional Council of Limousin, France;
„The Manifesto for sustainable forest management", held by Massimo Donzella, politician, head of the permanent regional council commission „Environment", Liguria Region, Italy;
„A region where forest are the main source of living", held by Juhani Karkkainen, representative of the Joint Authority of Kainuu Region, Finland
„Initiatives for the improvement of Mediterranean mountain areas and related economy", held by representatives of Calabria, Italy.
After the plenary meeting the participants had the possibility to ask questions and to participate in discussions. Most of them were interested in forest fruits procession, mushroom procession, wildlife management and if there are some experiences in these partner regions regarding reglementations in such areas. We found out that, especially in Italian provinces there are some problems regarding wild animals reproduction situation. For example, in Calabria, last year aproximately 25-30 thousand of boars were shot, but this wasn't enough, so authorities had to extend the hunting season.
Furthermore, in the afternoon the conference continued with two thematic sessions. The first thematic session, moderated by Korodi Attila, Deputy of the Romanian Parliament, was about forest biomass based renewable energy sources and the second one, moderated by Tánczos Barna, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, included presentations regarding the participatory forest planning. Among these interesting presentations the following were held:
Forest Energy in Kainuu (Timo Karjalainen, Kainuu, Finland);
Regional indicators between Energy and Forestry policies (Damiano Penco, Liguria, Italy);
Experiences of wood energy use in Limousin (Sophie Pouthier, ademe-regional agency for environment and energy);
The participatory approach used in Limousin for the development of the regional strategic plan for forests resources: case study about the Territorial forest charter (Marc Horvat, Limousine, France);
Forestry in region development strategy (Jyrki Haataja, Joint Authority of Kainuu Region, Finland);
Elaborating new forest management strategies in the abandoned Mediterranean forests for the development of the rural zones of Calabria (Roberto Mercurio, University of Reggio Calabria, Forest Management Department).
At the end of the conference concluding remarks were held. Borboly Csaba, president of Harghita County Council, said that there were more questions answered during the conference than expected at the beginning. This proves the major interest toward the subject. Based on Korodi Attila's opinion, during the thematic session on forest biomass based renewable energy sources, our partner's problems are nearly the same with ours, so we have the possibility to learn from each other. Tánczos Barna reported on the same experiences during the thematic session he moderated and said that the three participants presented from three different points of view the conference's theme. Finally, Roberta Casapietra, project manager said that during the implementation of the RobinWood Plus project this was the first but not the last meeting that is technically evaluable and the next conference will have to be at least up to par with this one.