and influencing the behavior of major private sector producers, exporters and consumers of forest products. Early private sector actors targeted included Ikea, Home Depot, Time-Warner, Staples, and Anderson Windows among others.

An explicit incentive to aggressively pursue public–private partnerships was created in USAID in 2001 under the leadership of a Global Development Alliance Secretariat, empowered to provide matching funds to successful USAID technical staff proposals in which public–private partnerships were integral to the proposed programmatic initiative. The incentives for WWF/GFTN and Metafore to join the SFPGA included additional financial resources flowing from USAID, a global partnership with USAID/Washington headquarters that might increase the stature of their programs in the eyes of the large private sector firms whose cooperation they needed to achieve their sustainable forest management goals, and in the case of WWF/GFTN enhanced access to USAID missions and American embassies. The large private sector firms sought lessons learned in the movement toward sustainability in management of forests, a resource upon which their future depends, green branding, improved supply chain efficiency, and linkages with other firms concerned with sustainability and good legal standing.

USAID and WWF had a long history of collaboration. Both NGOs had in place significant, established partnerships with major private sector firms in the forest products industry. USAID provided $3 million the first year and committed to maintaining that level of funding, although financial support has drifted downward to $1.4 million in FY 2007. USAID total funding, through FY 2007 was $10.7 million, WWF has contributed $34.2 million, Metafore $1.6 million.

The NGO partnerships with the large for-profit firms are not formally part of the SFPGA although essential to its on-the-ground success. Private sector firms early on found USAID’s pace and bureaucratic requirements did not match their work style; USAID had no legal mechanism suitable for establishing a “partnership” with the private firms anyway. It did have in place and utilized donor–grantee mechanisms to cement relationships with the two NGOs, thus establishing USAID in the role of funder, not partner.

The SFPGA partnership has had a significant market-driven impact on improved management of forests. The value of forest product sales from well-managed forests associated with the GFTN rose from $5.9 billion in Sept. 2003 to $42 billion in Sept. 2007. The area of forest managed by GFTN participant companies increased from 10.4 to 26.6 million hectares over the same period and the number of GFTN participants that own or manage forests increased from 23 to 78 companies.

Market forces are now much more supportive and encouraging of legal, sustainable, and certified forestry than was the case pre-SFPGA. But these market forces are not yet genuinely self-supporting. The technical chal-