Cadastre and Land Use Discrepancies Between Forestry and

Agriculture - Case Study Town of Otočac

Konrad Kiš

Dvokut-ECRO Ltd., Trnjanska 37, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia (konrad.kis@dvokut-ecro.hr)

Abstract

One of the basic problems in the field of private forestry and agriculture is unresolved
cadastre and Land Registry, especially in mountainous areas where these two activities
intertwine to a great extent. The reason for such a situation lies, before all, in the
depopulation of rural areas which took place during the last couple of decades and caused
natural succession of forest vegetation over former agricultural lots. Unresolved cadastre
and proprietary rights impede further development of these activities in the sense of
disqualifying potential beneficiaries from withdrawal of financial means from domestic
General Welfare Functions from Forests fund, as well as the European Agricultural Fund
for Rural Development (EAFRD). Situation as such also impedes the development of
ecological/extensive agriculture on former agricultural lots, which is one of the major
strategic determinants of Croatian agriculture, justified by a sudden burst of this activity
in the last decade. This article analyses current political and legislative situation in the
field and, through the application of GIS tools and qualitative data analysis of a
questionnaire sent to the most important stakeholders, investigates the roots of these
problems and, eventually, suggests concrete measures and steps to be taken in order to
improve the current situation following the case study of the Town of Otočac as a local
self-government unit.

Keywords: private forestry, ecological/extensive agriculture, cadastre, Land Registry, EU

funds, depopulation, revitalisation of rural areas.

Introduction

Forest coverage in Croatia currently amounts to roughly 2,402,782 hectares (43%) 73 of

the territory, which is an increase of 14.2% when compared to the year 1985 and 17.6%
when compared to the year 195874. It is obvious that the forest coverage in Croatia is
gradually increasing for the last fifty years, but unfortunately this is not the result of a
carefully prepared and implemented forestry development strategy, but rather of the
abandonment of former agricultural lots and the depopulation of rural areas which caused
gradual succession of forest vegetation on those lots. These two trends are concurrent or,
better to say, the increase in forest coverage is the result of the depopulation of rural areas.
Such situation causes numerous problems for both sectors, forestry as well as agriculture,
since none of the two can efficiently manage such land due to unresolved cadastral issues
- for example, forest owners whose forests grow on cadastral lots registered for
agricultural purposes cannot apply for subsidies from the General Welfare Forest Fund,
while at the same time such plots can hardly be restored to their previous function due to
significant changes of soil and financial means required for the purpose of removal of the
overgrown forest. The most interesting collision of the two major laws which regulate
this field, the Forest Act (OG 140/05, 82/06, 129/08, 80/10, 124/10, 25/12, 68/12, 148/13,
73
"Hrvatske šume" Ltd.: Forest Management Plan of the Area for the period 2006 - 2013.
74
Anić, I.: Two hundred and fifty years of Croatian Forestry or How our Forests Were Created, Zagreb 2012.
94/14) and the Agricultural Land Act (OG 39/13, 48/15) consists in the fact that the Forest
Act defines forest as an "...area overgrown with forest in form of a forest stand on a
surface larger or equal to 0,1 hectares" (Article 4, Paragraph 1 of the Forest Act). At the
same time, the Agricultural Land Act prescribes in Article 4, Paragraph 1 the obligation
of "...maintaining the agricultural land in order to serve its initial purpose" which
includes the obligation of removal of all woody perennial plants on agricultural lots, as
described in the Paragraph 2 of the same article. In the same time, the Forest Act forbids
clear-cutting of forests, which clearly puts these two laws in collision. Although there is
no known precedent of legal cases which would resolve any contingent disputes of such
type, this situation clearly impedes the development of both sectors.
Another aspect of the story refers to the proprietary issues - to add to the problems of a
non-resolved cadastre, most of the privately owned agricultural (and forest) lots are not
regulated from the ownership aspect. There are numerous co-owners on most of such lots,
many of them deceased or living abroad (in some cases with no awareness whatsoever
that they owe a piece of land somewhere on the other side of the planet), and in some
cases they are even marked as owners of only a "piece" of the lot, which complicates
things to a very high extent. A special case also present lots situated in nature protected
areas where economic utilization of natural resources is prohibited (national parks), which
creates a full array of other problems partially covered by the Nature Protection Act (OG
83/13).
The recent survey of the Faculty of Agronomy in Zagreb went for recording of all
agricultural land on the territory of Croatia by means of simple eye recognition of
agricultural lots visible on orthographic photographs from 2011, which provided the state
of the art regarding the exact and real coverage of Croatia with agricultural land, or at
least land that is in reality used for agricultural purposes75. Apart from identifying such
lots and assessing the impact of agriculture on pollution of surface and ground waters, the
study provided insight into some interesting data on land use and land use change, the
basic conclusion being that the data vary significantly in regard to their source (counties'
and municipalities' spatial plans, Corine Land Cover etc.). According to the data from the
Report on Spatial Situation in Croatia for the period 2008 - 2012, approximately 47.2%
of the country is covered with forests and forest land, 11.2% with state-owned agricultural
land (non-cultivated), 4.6% with state-owned cultivated agricultural land and
approximately 31.8% with privately owned agricultural land, which accounts for almost
one third of the country. Other data sources, e.g. ARKOD76, are unreliable since only a
half of the country's agricultural lots are registered, while CORINE77 land cover presents
data on too small a scale which makes them highly unreliable (minimum charting area is
25 hectares78, therefore many smaller surfaces are added to the surrounding category
which covers large enough a surface). Such situation called for another, more reliable and
more comprehensive research which would provide the actual data on the contemporary
utilization of agricultural land in Croatia. This research was conducted by the Faculty of
Agriculture in Zagreb, and the data provided were used in this work for the comparison
of real forest coverage and agricultural land coverage on the administrative area of the
town of Otočac.

75
Hrvatske vode, Public Institution for Water Management (2014): "The Impact of Agriculture on Pollution of Surface and Ground
Waters in Croatia", Zagreb, December 2014.
76
ARKOD - national system of identification of land lots, i.e. registry of the utilization of agricultural land in Croatia (www.arkod.hr)
77
CORINE land cover Croatia (CLC Croatia) - Coordination of Information on the Environment - digital data base on the environment
and land use assessed by the EU as the basic reference set of data for territorial and spatial analyses
(http://www.azo.hr/CORINELandCover).
78
Hrvatske vode, Public Institution for Water Management (2014): "The Impact of Agriculture on Pollution of Surface and Ground
Waters in Croatia", Zagreb, December 2014, p. 13.
Theoretical background

Social theory which fits the best into the given context is most probably the Tragedy of
the Anticommons, a concept which originally appeared in Michael Heller's article in
199879. This concept addresses the phenomenon of underuse of a value, since multiple
right holders have a right of exclusion, i.e. a right of veto, as opposed to the Tragedy of
the Commons, a situation where a value is prone to overuse due to multiple right holders
and the inability of exclusion - in other words, a value which everyone can use and no
one is directly responsible (common and social property inherent to former socialist
countries of Mid and Eastern Europe). In his work, Heller described the transition from
former “common” property to private, i.e. “anticommon”, using the example of empty
storefronts and full street kiosks in Moscow after the disintegration of the former Soviet
Union. The major problem that this transition poses is the inability to clearly distinguish
property rights of the successors, i.e. subjects who – by some right – will inherit (a part
of) ownership over a respective property. In simple terms, new proprietary right holders
are determined by automatism and often unclear legal situations, which causes numerous
types of problems with the legal state of the former common property – many of the new
owners are sometimes not even aware that they are the new owners, while some of them
are deceased, have moved away or simply lack any interest whatsoever to deal with the
newly-formed proprietary issues. This (major) problem is depicted in the following
scheme:

Picture 2. Difference between private property and anticommons property

(Source: Heller, M. “The Tragedy of the Anticommons”, p. 56)

In the first case (private property), a single owner owns a single property - a case of clear,
solid ownership which is not subject to interpretation – person “A”, “B” or “C” is the sole
owner of the property 1, 2 or 3 and exclusive holder of all rights. Such property can easily
enter the market and may be sold/purchased without any legal consequences or
impediments. On the other hand, anticommons property presents a case where one owner
owes a piece of several different properties. Each property has a variety of owners, and
each owner owns a piece of a variety of properties. For such a property to enter the market,
a consensus of all owners is required, which is in reality almost impossible to achieve. In
such a situation, each of the co-owners has a right of veto if she/he does not agree with
the majority owners’ decision. The number of co-owners in such cases can go very high
– there are cases where a small land lot is owned by more than a hundred owners.
Although Russian case does not exactly depict the situation on the administrative area of
the Town of Otočac, the essence of the problem is the same – hereditary rights were
passed over through generations and, accordingly, property right holders grew in

79
Heller, Michael (January 1998): "The Tragedy of the Anticommons". Harvard Law Review.
numbers. Few have ever bordered to tidy up the mess in the Land Registry, until finally
the situation escalated to a level on which it cannot be resolved by any known
conventional method, thus disqualifying an extremely large portion of land from any kind
of (legal) utilization or transaction.

Methodological framework

For the purpose of this research, it was essential to determine the exact forest-covered
surface on the administrative area of the town of Otočac. Visual digitalization of
orthographic photographs obtained from the web mapping server of State Geodetic
Administration and GIS tools (ArcMap) were used to chart the forest-covered area, which
was later compared to the agricultural and forest surface stated in the cadastre.
Comparison of these data was used for the purpose of questioning the initial assumption
that a very large forest surface on the town’s administrative area is registered as
agricultural land in the cadastre.

Orto photo image Forest area – digital drawing Agricultural area – digital drawing

Picture 1. Orto photo image, digital drawing of real forest-covered area and digital
drawing of the real agricultural land coverage

In order to get a more detailed insight into the issue, a semi-structured questionnaire was
designed which consisted of a combination of quantitative elements, using a five-degree
Likert scale, and open-ended qualitative questions on the experiences of each of the
interviewees regarding the respective issues. Since this research was extremely limited in
terms of time and money, conventional sampling methodology was not used in this matter
(setting up of a sampling frame, probabilistic or non-probabilistic sampling etc.) – the
interviewees were rather selected from the group of officials, governmental or non-
governmental, who are the most prominent representatives of respective stakeholders.
Concretely, this included the representatives of the Advisory Service (forestry and
agricultural department), state company for forest management (“Hrvatske šume” Ltd.),
State Geodetic Administration, nature protected areas (national parks and nature parks),
forestry and agricultural departments of regional governments, Ministry of Agriculture,
private forest owners’ associations, Agricultural Land Agency and Croatian Chamber of
Forestry and Wood Technology Engineers. After the completion of the survey,
questionnaires were analysed by means of simple statistical and qualitative assessment in
order to provide a deeper insight into the understanding of the problems and, finally, to
suggest concrete measures that have to be taken in order to improve the current situation.

Analysis of Results

The first part of the analysis refers to the basic data acquired from the "Hrvatske vode"
public institution regarding the exact coverage of the agricultural land and charting of the
forest-covered area via GIS tools, compared with the cadastral data acquired from the
State Geodetic Administration, local branch Otočac. The total area of the administrative
unit (Town of Otočac) amounts 56,530 ha. The difference between the total coverage of
forests and agricultural land (52,195.084 ha in the cadastre opposed to 40,909.838 ha
gained by the GIS measurement) is most probably due to the recent spreading of
residential areas and land-use change for other purposes than forests and agriculture,
changes which were not respectively recorded in the cadastre.
Comparison of cadastral and real land cover data is summarized in the following table:

Table 1. Comparison of cadastral and data acquired via GIS tools regarding agricultural
and forest land coverage
OFFICIAL CADASTRAL DATA GIS - ACQUIRED DATA
agricultural forest-covered agricultural forest-covered
cadastral district TOTAL TOTAL
land (ha) land (ha) land (ha) land (ha)
Brlog 4,048 139 4,186.934
Brloška Dubrava 1,050 24 1,073.537
Čovići 1,281 41 1,322.040
Dabar 1,392 318 1,710.606
Doljani 4,205 25 4,229.746
Hrvatsko Polje 1,199 102 1,301.042
Kompolje 901 37 937.769
Kuterevo 2,223 1,594 3,816.753
Ličko Lešće 1,128 5,962 7,090.503
Otočac 1,740 465 2,205.570
Prozor 934 3,507 4,441.106
Ramljani 1,899 820 2,718.966
Sinac 2,147 25 2,171.609
Škare 1,373 15 1,388.501
Švica 2,712 10,889 13,600.402
TOTAL 28,230 23,965 52,195.0840 16,098.77 24,811.0685 40,909.838

The most indicative figure in this table is the difference between the agricultural land
coverage as stated in the cadastre (28,230 ha) opposed to the real agricultural land
coverage gained by the GIS measurement (16,098.77 ha), which means that the active
agricultural land is in reality reduced by 62.99% in comparison to the obsolete cadastral
data. On the other hand, there is only a small increase of forests in reality when compared
to the cadastral data (24,811.0685 ha opposed to 23,965 ha), i.e. forest area in reality is
only by 3.6% larger than that stated in the cadastral books, which does not correspond to
the discrepancy in agricultural land surfaces.

Depopulation of Otočac in the period

from 1971 to 2011
40.000
30.579
30.000 26.502 24.992

20.000
10.411 9.778
10.000

0
Census 1971 Census 1981 Census 1991 Census 2001 Census 2011

Graph 1. Census data on the population of Otočac80

(Source: Croatian Bureau of Statistics)

80
Although the surface of the former Yugoslav municipality of Otočac was much larger when compared to the contemporary
administrative unit of the Town of Otočac, negative demographic trend is obvious nevertheless.
This could be explained by the fact that in the past people quite often clear-cut forests in
order to provide arable land for crops, not stating the change in the cadastre. In other
words, forest has in reality partly taken over what has initially been registered as forest in
the first place. Other reasons for this situation refer to the abandoned agricultural land
which has not yet been taken over by forests, but which is not used for agricultural
purposes for quite a while. These data highly correspond to the negative demographic
trends of the town of Otočac, i.e. the decrease in numbers of the rural population and
abandonment of rural areas and agricultural land accordingly (Graph 1).

The second part of the analysis was the overview of questionnaires. Altogether, the survey
was sent to 60 interviewees, and response rate was 28.3% (17 replies). The following
table shows their professional background:

Table 2. Professional background of interviewees who filled the questionnaire

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND OF INTERVIEWEES WHO FILLED THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Professional background No. %
Ministry of Agriculture 4 23,5
Advisory Service (agricultural and forestry departments) 7 41,2
Croatian Chamber of Forestry and Wood Technology Engineers 1 5,9
“Hrvatske šume” Ltd. 1 5,9
Regional and local self-government authorities 1 5,9
Private Forest Owners’ Associations 2 11,8
Unknown 1 5,9
TOTAL 17 100

Preceding table shows that the majority of interviewees who filled the questionnaire come
from both departments (agricultural and forestry) of the Advisory Service, as well as
various departments of the Ministry of Agriculture, which is intelligible since they hold
the most power (ability) and interest to influence the situation. Private forest owners’
associations are directly affected by the situation, but their organizations lack motivation
and coherency (at the time being) which impedes them from taking a more active role in
the process. The answers were provided as follows:

Q1: To what extent does the discrepancy between land use and cadastral records on
certain plots cause problems in your every day's work?
The majority of interviewees answered that this discrepancy causes either a very high
extent of problems (41%) or high extent of problems (23%) in their every day's work,
which is not surprising since most of the answers come from subjects who are directly
involved in the matter. One answer elaborates the issue stating that this discrepancy
impedes owners from applying their projects for co-financing from the IPARD or use
their land in any other legal way.
Q2: How would you assess the reasons for non-harmonization of the cadastre and
unresolved proprietary rights in Land Registry? Please rank your answers on a Likert
scale from 5 (most important reason) to 1 (least important reason).
From provided options (continuous splitting of lots in a hereditary process, owners’
ignorance, insufficient support from the state, depopulation of rural areas and
mountainous regions, lack of harmonization among laws and bylaws), lot splitting and
owner’s ignorance were marked as highly important or important (more than 60% of
answers in ranks 5 and 4), as moderately important were marked insufficient state support
and lack of harmonization among laws and bylaws (35% in rank 3), while importance
ranking for depopulation of rural areas were equally distributed (app. 20% of answers for
each importance class). In one of the answers, Land Registry (Ministry of Justice) was
stated as the most important stakeholder (rank 5).
Q3: Which are the most important stakeholders involved in this issue? Please rank your
answers on a Likert scale from 5 (most important stakeholder) to 1 (least important
stakeholder).
Croatian government, i.e. the Ministry of Agriculture, was marked as the most important
(responsible?) stakeholder (77% of respondents ranked its importance with 5), other two
are private forest owners (35% of respondents ranked importance with 5) and State
Geodetic Administration (47% of respondents ranked importance with 5). As least
important stakeholder was ranked “Hrvatske šume” Ltd. (47% of respondents ranked its
importance with 1) since they are not – at present – involved in the situation with privately
owned land, either agricultural or forestial, but were nevertheless in charge of the private
forest owners’ forests in the period after the dissemination of the former Forestry
Extension Service in 2010 and its re-emerging as one of the departments in a newly
created Advisory Service in November 2013.
Q4: Have you ever encountered, during your professional career, a legal case
regarding the conflict on relation forests and forest land – agricultural land?
Around 70% of interviewees stated that they have never encountered such a case. From
those who have, it was mainly about the differences between the actual land use and
cadastral records. Two answers are quite intriguing: one states a case where land use was
changed from agricultural to forest and cadastral change took place accordingly, but the
Agricultural Inspectorate nevertheless ordered the restoration of a former land use
(plough land). This decision was confirmed by the court. Another case, quite the opposite,
states that a clear-cut of forest was performed and land use change to agricultural land
was recorded on behalf of the Cadastral Management, after which forestry inspection lost
all jurisdiction over the respective lot. Recording of same lots in multiple ways causes
situations where the total surface of such lots surpasses the total surface of the
administrative unit by almost 100%.
Q5: To what extent do you find this situation politically influenced?
The majority of respondents stated that the situation was politically influenced to a greater
or lesser extent (30% stated that it was entirely or to a great extent politically influenced
and 23% that it was politically influenced to a lesser extent). In addition, respondents
provided comments stating that there is a lack of political will for resolving this problem,
because it is the Government’s decision what will be the scope of operations of its
institutions. Also, tax evasion might be one of the reasons for such a situation.
Q6: In your every day's work, have you ever dealt with projects which were applied for
co-financing from the EU funds?
Sixty percent of respondents replied that they have engaged in the preparation of such
projects.
Q7: If your answer to the previous question was “yes”, how big a problem in the
preparation of project was presented by the non-harmonized cadastre and unresolved
proprietary rights?
The answers to this questions were inconclusive, since answers were equally distributed.
Q8: Please, shortly state what is your opinion on the resolution of this problem?
This was the most important, entirely open-ended question and assumed every
respondent’s personal opinion on how to resolve the problem. After reviewing of the
respondents’ answers, the conclusion was that they address three basic topics: too high a
price, state’s intervention and procedural issues. The first problem refers to the fact that
costs of legal services quite often surpass the benefit of regulating the legal status of a
property, so no one will engage due to strictly economic reasons. In addition to this, there
is also a resistance to the idea on behalf of the family’s elders and insufficient familiarity
with the process. Motivation of the state and need for its intervention was stressed in the
majority of replies, confirming the fact that this is the issue of national importance and
should be resolved at the highest level. State should provide legal and financial aid in
order to resolve the situation on the global scale, amend respective laws and bylaws
accordingly to the extent needed to create a sound preconditions for the beginning of the
resolution process. Also, there is a need for improved performance of lawyers, courts,
Land Registry and cadastre offices, since in many cases their negligence, ignorance and
slowness impede further development. Land reparcelling was also mentioned, although it
is of lesser importance in hilly and mountainous regions such as the Town of Otočac.
Third group of answers refers to a more technical details, e.g. suggestions on what needs
to be done in the process in order to improve the contemporary situation. Majority of
respondents suggested harmonizing the Land Registry data with those of the cadastre,
because cadastral records are more up-to-date than those of the Land Registry. Land
Registry records are more important since they prove the right of ownership, but are more
obsolete and inaccurate. The respondents pointed out that such a situation will be the
major obstacle in the implementation of the Rural Development Programme, prevention
of depopulation of rural areas and generation of new vacancies, indicating that the
respective ministry currently lacks capacities to draw radical moves aimed towards the
resolution of this problem. Some suggested that court officials should pay field visit and
register the actual owner of an estate as the sole owner. In addition, owners’ responsibility
was also pointed out as one of the major reasons for this problem – quite often, owners
did not make sufficient efforts in order to resolve their proprietary and cadastral issues,
they are lacking a clear vision and strategy of what to do with their land and how to
position themselves in the emerging markets.
Q9: By the end of 2008, the Constitutional Court rendered null and void the provisions
of the Agricultural Land Act regulating the possibility of renting the unused private
agricultural land on behalf of the Agricultural Land Agency to third parties. Do you
agree with this decision of the Constitutional Court?
In an attempt to at least partly resolve this issue, the former Agricultural Land Act from
2008 stipulated the possibility of renting privately owned, unused agricultural land to
third persons via the Agricultural Land Agency. Despite the fact that nominal owners
(stated in the Land Registry) would automatically receive market price reimbursement
for renting their land (although, not of their own will), the Constitutional Court rendered
those provisions null and void by the Decision from March 2011, stressing the "sanctity
of private ownership". Sixty percent of respondents stated that they agree with this
decision.

Conclusions and Debate

There is no doubt that non-harmonization of cadastral data and unresolved proprietary

rights pose one of the most important obstacles in rural development when it comes to
private forestry and agriculture. Spatial analysis performed by comparison of the existing
cadastral data and preparation of new ones (charting of the forest-covered area) confirmed
the initial assumption that a large portion of agricultural land stated as such in the cadastre
does not correspond to the actual situation in the field, i.e. it is not used for agricultural
purposes anymore (real agricultural surface is reduced by 62.99% when compared to the
cadastral data). Second part of the hypothesis was not entirely confirmed, since there is
little difference between the cadastral data on forest coverage and real forest coverage
gained by the GIS tools (real forest-covered surface is larger by only 3,6%), which means
that a large portion of land which is not anymore used for agricultural purposes has not
(yet) been overgrown with forests. Having in mind the continuous increase of the forest-
covered surface in Croatia since the 90-is, it is realistic to assume that this difference will
grow bigger in time. Although it was not possible to acquire the data on cadastral
agricultural land coverage at the state level for the time being, it is assumed that
approximately 16.25% (app. 511,596 ha) of agricultural land stated in the cadastre is not
used for agricultural purposes (real agricultural land coverage amounts 2,638,044
hectares, while the cadastre states roughly 3,15 million hectares registered as agricultural
land81). Qualitative analysis of respondents' answers on questions posed in the on-line
questionnaire pointed to several important facts:

 Non-harmonization of the cadastre and unresolved proprietary rights in Land

Registry do in deed pose a major threat to rural development and strategic
positioning of Croatian agriculture and forestry at the state level;
 Pricing of legal services needed in order to resolve the proprietary
rights/cadastral situation on someone's estate quite often surpasses the value of
benefits generated by the resolution - the intervention simply doesn't pay off, and
legal disputes regarding the issue seldom take place;
 State should be the main factor in the resolution of this problem, regardless to the
means (financial incentives, a decree, major projects aimed towards harmonizing
of the data etc.) - all other stakeholders lack the capacities;
 Resolution of this problem is of national importance and should be addressed with
upmost scrutiny and seriousness.

However, one may ask why this process hasn't started already, i.e. why isn't there a will
or capacities to even begin handling this problem. The main reason is strictly
bureaucratic: the Constitutional Court's Decision from February 21st 2007 void null the
provisions of the Law on Amendments to the Law on Financing of the Units of Local
Self-Government from 2001 (OG 059/01), namely Article 31 which introduced the tax
on non-cultivated agricultural land (Decision of the Constitutional Court, OG 026/07).
Furthermore, the same Court placed the "sanctity" of private property before common
sense which, naturally, strives for the mobilization of all unused resources, and especially
agricultural land which is a constitutional category, by its decision from March 30th 2011
when voiding null the provisions of the Law on Agricultural Land which provided the
Agency for Agricultural Land with a possibility of leasing the unused private agricultural
land to third parties, of course with market reimbursement to the actual owners, thus
eliminating any possibility for the resolution of this crucial problem. It has to be noted
that stakeholders who are directly affected by the situation - i.e. private forest and
agricultural land owners - hold the least power and therefore cannot trigger the process
by themselves. One can only guess why the state lacks interest for the resolution of this
problem, but various lobbies' interests who benefit from this situation might be one of the
reasons - for example, this situation suits the lawyers perfectly, since it is almost an
inexhaustible source of income. Likewise, import lobbies of agricultural products would
not be pleased with the strengthening of small players in the field. Major players like huge
agricultural companies and emerging private forest companies would also not feel too
comfortable with the strengthening of small land owners, i.e. producers, although they
would not pose a significant threat since most of their production would be, most
probably, eco-oriented.
What's important to notice is that this is not a sole problem of agriculture or forestry, it is
related to a whole array of other issues, the most important being stopping or, even better,
reversing the negative demographic trend in rural areas. Mobilization of the currently
abandoned or afforested agricultural land (regardless to whether it will be used for
forestry or agricultural purposes) would generate multiple benefits: new vacancies,
increased landscape values, increased biodiversity, improved touristic offer and
development of rural and ecological tourism, increased ecological production of
agricultural goods, increased supply with biomass which is currently the most important
81
Source: http://www.hr/hrvatska/gospodarstvo/poljoprivreda
renewable energy source etc. Since de-centralization and polycentric development are
one of the basic determinants of Croatia's draft Spatial Development Strategy, it is
obvious that resolution of this problem should be, as most of the respondents suggested,
the state's strategic goal. The most important question is how substantial amendments to
laws and bylaws are necessary in order to achieve this - the most extreme and - apparently
- the only option requires the amendments to the Constitution and redefinition of the
private property concept in order to place higher community's interest atop of the same,
because the two decisions of the Constitutional Court do not leave any alternative.
Although the Constitution defines (Article 50) that private property can be "…limited or
acquired in case of prevailing national interest, assuming full reimbursement of market
value of the property", so far it only referred to cases of acquisition for public purposes
such as construction of a highway and similar. In other words, a major step from the state
is needed in order to create preconditions for the resolution of this problem, i.e. either by
amending the very Constitution (which requires a two-third majority support in the
Parliament), or by appealing to the Constitutional Court with this issue - the latter is very
unlikely, since the existing precedent wasn't really favouring this attitude. Anyhow, it
would be very unrealistic to expect that this situation could be resolved case-by-case,
even if sufficient financial means were provided.
To conclude, it is beyond any doubt that the resolution of proprietary rights over private
agricultural and forest lots and harmonization of the cadastre data is a matter of national
importance and should be held as one of the state's strategic goals, but whether or not
political will and other means for its fulfilment will be achieved remains to be seen.

Literature
[1] "Hrvatske šume" Ltd. (2006). Forest Management Plan of the Area, p. 277.
[2] Anić, I.: “Two hundred and fifty years of Croatian Forestry or How our Forests
Were Created”, Zagreb 2012 (power-point presentation, available at
http://www.sumari.hr/250/mat/1-Anic.pdf)
[3] "Hrvatske vode", Public Institution for Water Management (2014): "The Impact of
Agriculture on Pollution of Surface and Ground Waters in Croatia", Zagreb,
December 2014.
[4] Heller, Michael (1998): "The Tragedy of the Anticommons". Harvard Law Review,
January 1998.
[5] Agricultural Land Act (OG 39/13, 48/15)
[6] Forest Act (OG 140/05, 82/06, 129/08, 80/10, 124/10, 25/12, 68/12, 148/13, 94/14).
[7] Constitutional Court Decision from February 21st 2011, reg. no. U-I-1559/2001 i
U-I-2355/2002,
http://digured.srce.hr/arhiva/263/26986/www.nn.hr/clanci/sluzbeno/2007/0972.ht
m
[8] Constitutional Court Decision from 30th March 2011, reg. no. U-I/763/2009,
http://www.iusinfo.hr/CaseLaws/Content.aspx?SOPI=USRH2009B763AI&Doc=
USTSUD_HR