Financial instruments of forest policy in Portugal in the 80s and 90s

This paper reviews the main programmes of financial incentives to forestry in Portugal through the 1980s and 1990s. First, these programmes are put in perspective with respect to the trends in forest resources and forest policy since the mid-19th century. Then, the main measures, beneficiaries and outputs are presented for each programme, together with an implementation analysis comparing the targets and outputs and giving plausible hypotheses to explain the implementation failures. The main conclusions of the paper are a long-term trend of increasing public financing to private forestry, with some remaining problems: unsustainable sources of public funds, and rates of afforestation and reafforestation still insufficient to make the forest industries competitive and to compensate for the damages caused each year by forest fires.