3.1 Policy framework assessment
BIH is a sovereign state with parliamentary state regulation and a
decentralized political and administrative structure. Land and land
resources are under exclusive jurisdiction of three administrative
units, which include the Republic of Srpska Entity, the Federation of
BIH Entity (FBIH) and BrĨko District (BD). FBIH comprises ten cantons
with their own governments, legislative and administrative framework
(Figure 1b ). There are 13 Ministries of Agriculture, Forestry
and Water Management MAFWMs in BIH (Agency of statistic BIH, 2017). For
each one of the three entities and ten cantons of FBIH, land is under
the jurisdiction of the MAFWM. Due to decentralization at the state
level, land policy implementation and enforcement takes place at the
entity level in RS and BD, and entity and cantons level in FBIH. In BIH,
no specific law is devoted to soil protection and, thus, the legislative
framework does not recognize land degradation explicitly. The main laws
at the Entity level that indirectly address land degradation are listed
in Table 2 . Land degradation falls under agriculture, forestry
and water legislations, but without a specific legal framework.
In 2017, however, BIH adopted an Action programme to combat land
degradation and mitigate drought effects. In FBIH, the implementation of
strategic documents and legal acts is complicated by the fact that this
entity has ten cantons and each have their own government, policy
framework and legislation for land management and environmental and
spatial planning. In regards to the local policy framework, current
legislation requires local governments to create local strategies on
land use planning, but many local communities do not accomplish this
task, due to the weak economic situation. With limited budget devoted
primarily to solving crrent economic problems. In addition, the existing
land use planning system differs between entities and cantons in FBIH.
Thus, the complexity of the legislative and strategic framework also
creates complexity in approaches and framework implementations.