The Project can work only if a practical change in the forestry service and policy is wanted by the political decision making level. The Project will start working in all countries to show the advantages of the adaptations.
For contributing sustainably to the development objective, the achievement of the immediate objective must be associated with the fact that the governments are continuously willing to support private / communal forest owners via state and private forestry services and other supportive institutional framework conditions. The risk that this will not happen is rated as very low because the economic benefits from this support will be evident.
Precondition for well functioning forest owner associations are the strict use of democratic rules and control mechanisms. The risk that this does not happen in some associations is high in the next years until the population becomes better used to apply these rules. However, in total some of the associations will succeed in this respect. This will be sufficient to serve as model for others.
Output 1 (adaptation of the forestry services) cannot contribute to achieve the immediate Project objective if good relationship between the SFS on the one side and private forest owners and community users and their organisations on the other are prevented or seriously hampers due to social, ethnic or political reasons. The same output is also associated with the risk that the government does not provide sufficient financial means or does not allow that the staff is using sufficient time for the forestry extension service.
A real risk is associated with Output 2 (private / communal forest associations) with respect to the world market prices of timber and other wood products. The present prices are already at the lower end. If the prices are being reduced again this could discourage the forest owners to manage their forests. In such a situation the idea of establishing associations is not very attractive any more.
Output 3 (essential requirements are integrated in the institutional framework) cannot be achieved if the political will is not sufficiently developed to implement the proposals made by the Project for improving the institutional framework. Once Output 3 has been achieved, in addition, the political will and the institutional mechanisms are required to adapt permanently the institutional framework conditions to the changing situations and needs of the private forest owners and community users