Montenegro

Geographic Information System for better forestry management in Montenegro

The course on Information Technology and Geographical Information System will enable the trainees to reduce forestry depletion and to prevent non-sustainable use of forestry resources, and to use gained knowledge and skills to increase and manage revenue from these resources and direct it to local development. It also provided the trainees with experience in creating and using digital maps of forest management units, making clear delineation of forests, inventory planning, validation and visualisation, planning forest roads, storage and usage of existing data, and detecting changes through time.

On that occasion Mr. Milutin Simović, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management said: “Along with the agriculture sector, the forests in Montenegro represent a very strong resource for rural areas in terms of ecology, economy and in social sense. With their numerous functions, they offer significant economic security to their owners, provide heating and building material, possibilities for recreation and tourism, and a good basis for entrepreneurs’ activities and creation of new jobs as well.”

Minister Simović used this opportunity to emphasize that significant reforms were underway in the forestry sector, and he reminded that by the end of this year the Ministry would adopt the National Programme for Development of Rural Areas and propose to the Government a new agriculture and rural development law. He added that they also plan to produce a map of rural zones. “In order to contribute to a faster economic growth of rural areas especially on the north, reduce poverty and regional differences and provide equality in access to services and resources, rural development targets will be integrated in forestry management,” concluded Minister Simović. 

Mr. Garret Tankosić Kelly, UNDP Resident Representative a.i./UN Interagency Focal Point in Montenegro said: “Forests today represent one of the most valuable resources that Montenegro has but at the same time the areas under forests also have high poverty rate according to Human Development Report and preliminary assessments done by Dr. Rene Castro in 2003 for Government of Montenegro.”

Explaining the importance of Geographic Information System for forestry sector, Mr. Tankosić Kelly said: “When we started the work in the forestry sector three years ago, we worked towards reaching this moment today when we have a pool of trained GIS individuals who, instead of the manual drawing on scarce photocopied maps, are using the technology towards creative tasks in forest management such as delineation of forest management units’ borders and preparation of local and national forest inventories.”

The trained GIS engineers said that one of the biggest problems they had were obsolete paper maps of forest management units. Now they can have them in electronic form, which largely simplifies their daily work. With electronic topomaps in scale 1:25.000 they can delineate areas under forest cover much easier and GIS helps them to have all the maps (management plans, forest management units, forest roads) easily accessible.

Mr. Mišo Anđelić, Deputy Minister for Forestry pointed out that Montenegro hasn’t had integrally established and defined forestry policy so far, but that the forestry policy was defined through legislation and certain strategic documents as a basis for sectoral development of forestry sector. “Global forestry policy has undergone significant conceptual changes, from solely economic orientation to a more and more important protective role in all the segments of forestry. In accordance with global and European forestry policy trends, the Montenegrin Forestry Policy needs to achieve balance in accomplishing all functions (economical, ecological, social and cultural),” said Mr. Anđelić. He also added that the first Forestry Policy in Montenegro, which was adopted in April, should mark transition from traditional to viable forestry.

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UNDP EnvGIS Project is planning to organize another course for representatives of wider environmental sector and in that way it will continue with support to the National Strategy for Sustainable Development and recently adopted National Forestry Policy.

 
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The National Forestry Policy, adopted in February 2008, acknowledges the fact that the Forestry sector in Montenegro is facing the challenge of improving the forest administration practice in order to implement the vision of forestry, to improve the current condition of all forests as to ensure the balance of protection, environmental, social and economic functions and to ensure sustainability. Having in mind that Montenegro is one of the countries with the biggest forest areas in Europe, it is not necessary to stress the importance of dealing with the challenges that the country is facing now. In addition to this, according to the value of forest areas, level of conservation, regulation, diversity, management and impact on the environmental protection, our forests are among the best quality forests in Europe.

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Geographic Information System is a set of technologies, processes, human resources and data from different domains (meteorology, forestry, water management, environmental protection, etc.), which can be compared, verified and jointly used for different researches in order to manage natural resources in a sustainable way.

Introduction of GIS in Montenegro aims to create conditions for better monitoring, management and protection of forests, biodiversity and land as most significant sustainable development resources in Montenegro. Ensuring environmental and forestry sustainability is one of the Millennium Development Goals, and it is unimaginable without complete and precise data on the forest conditions and the control processes in the planned forestry works. By establishing data framework required by various EU conventions, the GIS in the Montenegrin environmental sector will also contribute to the processes of accessing European Integration.  

The process of project implementation entailed procurement of equipment and software, set up of pilot GIS system encompassing forestry and biodiversity data and basic training of Central Management Unit of the Montenegrin Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management as well as trainings in biodiversity sector. 

All activities of EnvGIS are supported by the Government of Finland ($600,000), the Government of Japan ($200,000), the Government of Montenegro ($100,000) and the UNDP ($100,000).