The context of forest and environmental politics is changing. More than ever before, governmental actors lack the powers to deliver the required or requested policy results on their own. If decisions cannot, or shall not, be imposed by hierarchy, and co-ordination cannot be left to market mechanisms, other means of co-ordination are needed. Under the term “new modes of governance”, policy makers have been striving for less intrusive means of achieving policy goals.

The idea of governance is not new in the fields of forest, environmental and natural resource policy. However, so far, few comparative analyses or systematic evaluations of the effectiveness of these practices have been carried out. The recently finished research project “New Modes of Governance for Sustainable Forestry in Europe – GoFOR” strove to close – or at least narrow – this research gap. The main objective of the GoFOR project was to evaluate the evolving practices of new modes of governance as a basis for policy relevant conclusions and recommendations.

GoFOR was funded by the European Commission under the Sixth EU Framework Programme (FP6). The project involved partners in ten countries throughout Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Spain, the Netherlands).

Copyright © 2004 GoFOR, last modified 15.9.2008, Webmaster: ralf.nordbeck(at)boku.ac.at

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The GoFOR project is finished. Information on key results can be found in the following documents:

 Executive Summary (4 pages, 114 KB)

 Final Activity Report  (33 pages, 736 KB)

 Final Synthesis Report  (279 pages, 1.3 MB)

Selected GoFOR case reports have been published in the Research Reports Series of the Institute of Forest, Environmental, and Natural Resource Policy.

To get a brief overview of GoFOR, you can download the GoFOR leaflet below.

 GoFOR leaflet  (834 KB)