Municipal forests primarily provide ecosystem services which are in demand by residents. If they are to meet the demands of Prague’s citizens, managers need good quality information and appropriate financial resources. One important piece of data is a valuation of all ecosystem services. The aim of this paper is to assess the current level of organisation and funding of forest management, estimate the value of forest functions and contribute to improvements in annual reporting by the Forests of the City of Prague. The results of the valuation could potentially be used for the improvement of decision making processes. The organisational structure (Centre of Forests, Watercourses and Reservoirs, Ornamental Nursery Management and Environmental Education) has been effective in delivering sustainable forest management in the City. In addition, forest management of the City of Prague has been independently certified under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) International Standard since May 2007.
The current form of the environmental protection organizational arrangement in the City of Prague at the level of municipalities and administrative wards is analyzed. Effectiveness of the organizational arrangement is assessed and disunity of the organizational structure stated. The study revealed an unsatisfactory state, which, however, no one has addressed so far. Possible solutions are discussed, and optimizing approach consisting in the reduction of municipalities themselves within the reform of public administration, or in a transfer of public administration execution to a higher level - i.e. the administrative ward, is proposed. Other related issues such as administrative workload of staff members are dealth with proposing, among other, to desist from unnecessary activities. Actual work effectiveness was not assessed because of limited data available. The paper presents the line of research into this problem conducted at the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague.
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