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Romanian Mountain Commons

Throughout the Carpathian Mountains there are large woodlands and grazing areas owned, governed and managed in collective ways by community-based institutions called obști and composesorate.

The commons were reconstituted starting with the Romanian restitution law 1/2000. From a legal point of view, they are considered land in private property of ‘juridical persons’.

Numerical Estimates*

>more than 1500 commons

>more than 400.000 rightholders / commoners

>woodland surface cca 870.000 ha

>14% of the forested area of Romania governed in commons regime

>24% of the privately owned woodlands

>grazeland surface estimated cca. 300.000 ha

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*rough estimates from corroborating our results with partial official data

What did our project do

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  • survey database

  • interviews database

  • photographic archive

  • documents archive

We researched extensively contemporary Romanian land commons between 2015-2017. Our database includes 329 surveyed cases of commons. We collected data from 20% of the existing number of commons in Romania, accounting for nearly 1/2 of the forests owned as commons and nearly 1/3 of the surface of pasture owned.

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Institutional Hosts

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Institute of Sociology, Romanian Academy, Bucharest (2015-2017)

 

IRITHESys, Humboldt University, Berlin (2015-2016)

 

Rachel Carson Center, LMU, Munich (2017-2019)

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Financing (2015-2017): Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS-UEFISCDI

Project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-2865

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