Klára Báliková

Water reservoirs are an important source of drinking water in Slovakia and are managed under the control of regional water utility enterprises. These enterprises face increasing challenges due to ecological pressures, land use conflicts, and technological constraints. This paper investigates the external factors that influence the management of drinking water reservoirs and their implications for water quality. Using the PESTLE framework (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental), we analyse case studies from four Slovak reservoirs: Málinec, Turček, Nová Bystrica, and Hriňová. The data was collected in 2025 using structured interviews with representatives of four water management enterprises and forest managers (three respondents from Málinec, Turček and Hriňová, two respondents from Nová Bystrica), whose forests surround the chosen water reservoirs. The analysis reveals that forest management, stakeholder relations, extreme climate events, and outdated infrastructure significantly affect water treatment efficiency and operational costs. While national water policy provides a uniform regulatory framework, the case studies demonstrate that local conditions and governance dynamics strongly impacts the water management utilities and its performance in drinking water treatment.

Forests cover almost one half of European land. Therefore, land taxes, including taxes from forests, are essential for a municipality's income. The land tax system is implemented on different levels, mainly nationally and locally. Therefore, many land tax features are settled by federal law, and others differ according to the local tax administrators. The objective of the paper is to compare the current laws and principles and the implementation process of forest land in Slovakia and Portugal. We have selected countries from different geographical areas of Europe. Even though the forest compositions and forest ownership differ, we aimed to identify whether the forest land tax systems can be similar. We analysed the legislation and strategic documents on the national level that helped us to describe the land tax system and its general features (e.g. taxpayer, tax rate, tax base, exemption options, tax period, or penalties). In both countries, the national tax law governs the tax implementation and settles any basic processes related to tax collection. The municipalities have the right to revise both the tax rates and exemptions. The results also show that forest owners in Slovakia have more options for tax exemptions than in Portugal.

The increasing competition for nature resources usage emerges the highest pressure on ensuring forest ecosystem services. The goal of the paper is to demonstrate that the quality of the water is the forest's positive external effect and the value of this service. The paper points to possibilities for valuation methods based on costs for drinking water treatment in forested water catchments near three water reservoirs in Slovakia. The value of this service in the case of analysed water reservoirs in Slovakia is in the range of 1.67 to 8.90 € ha-1 year-1. With the alternative payment of a water cent for each m 3 of drinking water consumed, the calculated value per ha of forest in water reservoir catchment is in the range of 3.82-12.19 € ha-1 year-1. The valuation of water quality and quantity regulation enables to compensate forest enterprises for ensuring these services and is also the base for implementing effective forest policy instruments.

Nature conversation policy in Slovakia is focused on territorial and species protection. Nature protection is regulated by the Nature and landscape protection act. This regulation framework also affects forest policy and applies to forest management. The implementation of nature protection has a cross-sectoral character and oftentimes restricts forest ownership rights. Therefore, the scientific goal of the paper was to analyse the impact of specific legislative changes of the Act on Nature and Landscape Protection on forest management practices. We analysed 36 essential amendments to this act, defined the changes, and described their impact on forest management or owner. The most amended part of the act was the implementation of mandatory compensation payments for legal restrictions and forest management regulations at individual levels of nature protection. The most current amendment has changed the administration of national parks, which mainly affected state-owned forest land.

Financial support from the Rural Development Program is an

Preferential land tax programs are used over 50 years and are mainly connected with nature protection and environmental goals. Nowadays, they are also considered as a way how to promote and support forest ecosystem services that arise from exempted forest land. In Slovak Republic national forest land tax reduction scheme exists for special purpose and protection forests, as well for other forests with special importance. The goal of the paper was to develop a multidimensional evaluation of this economic instrument for ecosystem service support in Slovakia. We evaluated how the forest land tax reduction fits into the payments for ecosystem services theory, which services are supported and what is the potential and implementation effectiveness according to theory of policy analysis. Even though, the forest owners and enterprises benefit from tax reductions, evidence regarding its visibility as payment for ecosystem service is low. Forest land tax reductions are considered as other economic incentive for ecosystem services support with moderate potential effectiveness. Despite the instrument have low visibility of FES supported from both sides – sellers and beneficiaries, its potential effectiveness is high, due its automatic and stable implementation without relevant implementation gaps.

Even though water-related forest ecosystem services are important for forestry and water management sectors, they have different definitions and are regulated differently in each sector, which makes them poorly recognized. How stakeholders from two main sectors (forestry and water management) perceive the importance of water-related forest ecosystem services, the trade-offs between ecosystem services and the effectiveness and implementation of payments schemes related to forest water ecosystem services were our areas of interest. We have conduct surveys with different groups of stakeholders from both sectors in four selected countries (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia) with a lot of similarities and the potential to learn from each other. The results show that in spite of the spotted differences among analyzed countries, there is a high level of agreement among respondents on all investigated aspects. In addition, even though different payment schemes exist in three of four countries, stakeholders are rarely aware of their existence, or it is better to say that they do not recognize them as payment schemes for ecosystem services because of their names and definitions, which do not clearly define ecosystem services. Mostly, they use bundled services and non-voluntary payments and are designed and implemented by the states. Due to the strong role of states and the low transparency in the existing schemes, we looked at possible conditions reflected through stakeholders’ opinions for overcoming that obstacle for the development of new payment schemes. We found that there is a high level of acceptance of payments schemes as more effective than “command and control” schemes and of the involvement of other stakeholders in decision-making processes as those conditions that can positively influence development of new payment schemes in all four countries. These results give us hope that in spite of the strong role of the state in selected countries, the role of stakeholders will be more acknowledged and, by that, the future schemes will be more harmonized among the sectors and their goals and needs, contributing to its effectiveness as well.

Sustainable forest management provides a wide range of water‐related ecosystem services (WES) fundamental for human well‐being such as groundwater recharge, runoff and water discharge to streams, soil erosion protection, and recreational opportunities. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) promote sustainable forest management by reducing negative externalities. To implement PES schemes, many stakeholders with different interests and needs must be involved in the design and implementation process. The aim of this study is to investigate stakeholders’ opinions on the relationships between forests and water resources and the water‐related PES schemes in Italy. A semi‐structured questionnaire was administered to a sample of stakeholders. The results show that the most important WES provided by forests are soil erosion reduction, provision of habitats for different species, surface runoff reduction. The respondents emphasize the importance of regulating and supporting services, while they minimize the importance of cultural services related to the water resource.