The effectiveness, economic efficiency and equity aspects of forestry funding mechanisms in Europe were assessed by EFI coordinated EFFE project. The results provide information for designing new public programmes and contribute to the development of related evaluation tools. The EFFE team looked at the EU and national forestry assistance and extension programmes of 1990-1999, both in private and public sector. Within the group of countries studied, the level of public forestry funding totalled from 1.7 million euro in Estonia to 2.6 billion euro in France. The majority of the programmes analysed was financed through grant schemes while the other most commonly used economic instruments were tax concessions. The activities that received more than a half of all public support were forest protection (17%), planning and forest inventory (16%), infrastructure (14%), and afforestation and reforestation (12%).
The economic efficiency assessments showed that social profitability of afforestation programmes in Finland, Poland and Portugal justifies related public funding in these countries. On the contrary, in Belgium, afforestation programmes are rarely economically justified due to e.g. high land prices.
Policy implications
The evaluation of the effectiveness of the programmes revealed that the objectives of forestry assistance and incentive programmes of the 1990’s were often formulated only in a general, qualitative way. In order to be able to use programme objectives as criteria for determining effectiveness, they need to be clearly specified and measurable. Furthermore, programme effects could not always be properly estimated because of lack of information on related output indicators. In many countries, the existing monitoring systems would therefore need to be modified, so as to allow meaningful effectiveness and economic efficiency assessments.
It was also confirmed that financial instruments alone, without the support for technical assistance and/or related accompanying measures, may lead to failures in implementation. Recently, forest owners have become more and more diverse and their motives to participate in public programmes also vary a great deal.
A proposed follow-up activity deals with the development of an internet-based European information system on mechanisms of forestry funding. Such a system would build on experiences gained in the EFFE research project as well as results from other studies and evaluations, including relevant programme monitoring and evaluation activities of the European Commission.
EFI- European Forest Institute
EFFE–Evaluating Financing of Forestry in Europe
This project was carried out with the financial support from the Commission of the European Communities, DG Research - Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources Programme under the contract number Q
.