almost all countries in this region were formerly part of the ussr or yugoslavia so they are in a transition process with farreaching consequences for their economies and societies the actors of the forest sector private and public forest owners and managers industries traders as well as policy makers must function in an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing political economic and technological environment sometimes dominated by large extremely dynamic enterprises with a culture of rapid and successful innovation to survive and prosper forest sector actors must remain or become competitive developing innovative solutions to new challenges