This paper considers the implications for aid delivery of the rapidly changing international context of development assistance to the forest sector. The paper reviews the growing pressures to pool resources in support of forest sector development programmes. The limitations of the Tropical Forestry Action Programmes of the 1980s and the more general critique of international aid in the early 1990s have led to new attempts to promote sector-wide initiatives, culminating in the support for national forest programmes (nfps) through the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests. The experience of sector-wide programmes in other sectors offers clues as to where and in what ways successful nfps might be developed.