FOREST AS AN ELEMENT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN BJELAŠNICA MOUNTAIN

On the global level, exploitation of natural resources provides the livelihoods for a large amount of the world‟s population. Access to forest as “natural capital” provides a crucial contribution to the livelihood for about 1.6 billion people. In many countries around the world, people living in rural areas have lower incomes and are generally less prosperous than their urban counterparts. Due to these facts governments often attempt to promote rural development through the sustainable usage of natural resources such as forest. This article deals with people-forest relations, existing practices of usage of forest by local people in Bjelašnica Mountain, description of socio-economic characteristics of local rural population and explanation of how forest contributes to their livelihoods. Sustainable livelihoods approach was used as analytical framework for the purpose of this paper, as increasingly important in researches about regional development, poverty alleviation, rural development and rural resource management. Today, the situation in Bjelašnica Mountain is extremely complex. Affected by post-war trauma this area is characterized by: low rate of returnees in villages, increasing trends of de-ruralisation and migration, small number of inhabitants in villages, high proportion of elderly people which all together calls into question sustainability of these villages. This paper estimates the contribution of forests as an element of local people livelihoods and possibilities of using forest as a livelihood diversification strategy for rural development.