Legal framework of urban forestry management in Latvia
2022
Kraukle, Ieva | Stokmane, Ilze | Vugule, Kristine
Urban forestry is a relatively new branch where such issues as planning, governance and management of urban forests play an important role considering spatial planning of urban or suburban territory. The aim of the article is to find out the extent to which urban forests are reflected in European and Latvian regulatory enactments and planning documents, as well as to define the main recommendations for further actions; therefore, the regulatory enactments and planning documents of the European Union and Latvia were studied. Research showed that urban forests do not have any specific regulatory and planning framework at a European or Latvian scale. The standards that apply to urban forests can be found in regulatory enactments applicable to forest management, environmental protection, preservation of biological diversity, protection zones, plant protection, etc. In both European and local strategies, the forest issues as such and the issues of urban forests in particular appear as general, indirect issues, usually as the matters of biodiversity preservation or environmental sustainability. At the scale of Latvian legislation (laws and regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers), forests are mentioned in general, except for certain forestry laws, where forests are the main subject, which contain some provisions that are also directly applicable to urban forests. Urban forests are not reflected in these documents; to some extent they only appear in the plans as forest protection zones around cities.
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