Vila Real, 21 mar 2025 (Lusa) - The creation of a licence for forest service providers in Portugal and a maximum period for the authorisation of heirs to estates after death are part of the Forest Intervention Plan 2025-2050, presented on Friday in Vila Real.
According to a summary of the plan, presented by the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, and the ministers for the agriculture and environment, José Manuel Fernandes and Maria da Graça Carvalho, at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, the document aims for "a resilient forest, actively managed, and sustainable from an economic, environmental and social point of view".
With enhancement, resilience, ownership and governance as its pillars, the document stems from a Cabinet resolution published on 27 September which mandated the minister of agriculture and fisheries to present, within 90 days, in conjunction with other government areas, a strategy "for intervention aimed at creating and enhancing the value of the forest, increasing productivity and the income of forest producers".
In the document, consulted by Lusa, the main objectives are to eliminate "bureaucratic barriers" and facilitate "access to services, tools and incentives that support forestry sector operators", guaranteeing "the security and sustainability of territories, reinforcing the prevention and mitigation of risks, namely rural fires, forest pests and diseases and invasive species".
Solving the "structural and administrative challenges associated with the fragmentation of rural property, promoting an efficient management system" is also part of the plan, although many measures depend on the outcome of the early parliamentary elections on 18 May and the possible PSD/CDS-PP majority of the current government in office.
The plan, drawn up in the context of around fifty meetings with experts and public and private organisations representing the sector, points to 61 short-term actions in 2025 and 88 medium-term initiatives between 2028 and 2050.
Among the targets for support and incentives for forest management and stimulating increased productivity and profitability is the creation of a forestry service provider's licence, to be promoted in the medium term by the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), as well as the creation of commercial organisations for forestry product producers.
In the short term, this chapter also includes the development of the Active Forest Project, providing direct and simplified support for forest management (40,000 hectares/year), under the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Forests, and, in the medium term, a tax structure to incentivise active forest management and the creation of a law for forestry patronage.
In the field of property, the plan envisages revising the Legal Framework for Rural Property, improving the land ownership structure and speeding up and optimising the BUPI process (Balcão Único do Prédio, an interoperability platform that aggregates relevant information on urban, rural and mixed properties in Portugal, and their owners), with a ‘legislative change to stipulate a maximum time period for identifying or registering heirs after death’, to be promoted in the medium term by the Ministry of Justice.
Other initiatives include altering the legal requirements for acquiring ownership of rustic buildings by adverse possession, creating a professional inheritance administrator and a special procedure for renouncing property rights, making it compulsory to settle partitions within a period to be defined, simplifying the judicial process for dividing common property, reducing the period for adverse possession of rustic buildings in good faith by the Public Administration to five years, and speeding up the acquisition of buildings with no known owner.
The Ministry of Finance will be responsible for analysing the possibility of stimulating the resizing of rural property areas and reviewing the model for evaluating rural properties.
According to the Minister of Agriculture's office, "public investment of €6.4 billion is estimated between 2025 and 2050, with a greater effort in the initial phase between 2026 and 2030 (around €350-400 million per year)", with funding mainly from the Environmental Fund, the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) or other European sources.
The government estimates that, at the end of the plan's implementation, "another million tonnes of carbon sequestered per year will be achieved, contributing to the 2045 Carbon Neutrality targets", and that, by 2050, an "average of 420,000 hectares per year" will have been targeted between fuel management and afforestation and reforestation actions.
According to agriculture minister José Manuel Fernandes, who is quoted in the document, the implementation of the plan's measures "will be monitored and updated whenever necessary to respond to changing socio-economic, environmental and territorial dynamics and future challenges".
LFS/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
