A Study on the Evaluations on Korea’s Official Development Assistance in the Forest Sector and the Way to Improve its Development Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and evaluations of experts on Korea’s forest ODA to draw policy implications for raising the development effectiveness. For this, 25 experts from an ODA implementing agency and 49 forestry experts were selected. The awareness on Korea’s forest ODA, the appropriateness of project objectives, the evaluation on project outcomes and key factors for the successful project implementation were surveyed. In particular, four criteria including relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and impact were selected from OECD DAC evaluation principles for project evaluation. With regard to the relevance of projects, both groups considered feasibility studies had been inadequately conducted and the budget and timeline assigned at the project design stage were not enough. Furthermore, from the result of the study, it can be drawn that Korea’s forest ODA should put more emphasis on poverty eradication and income-boosting activities to contribute to the socioeconomic development in partner countries.