Legal protection of forests and rangelands against pests and diseases: a comparative study of the forest laws of Iran, France, Turkey, and South Africa

In recent years, climate changes and the expansion of transportation facilities, have elevated plant pests and diseases outbreak and transmission in natural ecosystems. Codification and implementationof effective laws to combat forest pests and diseases is one ofthe ways to achieve sustainable forest management. Comparative law with an interdisciplinary approach, provides insights to find new legal solutions to cope with emerging challenges, suggest new legal rules, and amend statutory law in specific domains. In this article the laws of forests and rangelandsof Iran, France, Turkey, and South Africa were investigated and provisions related to insects, pests, and diseases were extracted. The provisions were classified into three categories of measures including before, during, and after the outbreak and several pillars emerged in each category. Each pillar was described, compared, explained, and finally evaluated. The findings showed that the following measures have been considered in the laws of countries: Silviculture practices, removal of damaged trees and woody residuals, development of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management and their continuous monitoring, declaration of outbreak hotspots and contaminated areas as special areas for conservation, collection of harmful organisms and pathogens or their habitats, biological control, and prescribed burning. The results showed that in the studied laws, emphasis is placed on preventing stages of pests and disease outbreaks rather than during and after the outbreaks that remind us prevention is better than cure. These findings provide pillars for amending the national forest and range laws and regulations to combat wild plant insects, pests, and diseases.