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Community forest management (CFM) has gained prominence globally and shown great value as a community-based conservation approach to protecting and sustainably managing forest ecosystems while, at the same time, devolving tenure rights to local populations and stimulating local livelihoods and economies. Given CFM's relative successes and socioeconomic goals, it is often assumed to be an inherently just approach. Here, we challenge that assumption. We present a framework rooted in environmental justice to uncover how some initiatives can perpetuate or exacerbate unfairness and thus undermine the core purpose and spirit of CFM. We put forward three questions on the fairness of CFM programs. First, we call to question the imposition of new CFM-related restrictions and rules, considering Indigenous and local communities' legal autonomy and/or long-standing de facto rights. Second, we interrogate the burden of CFM-related economic costs and opportunity costs, in light of communities' poverty conditions and vulnerable livelihoods. Third, we examine the fairness of focusing on the role of local communities in tackling deforestation and forest degradation, given these groups might not be the ones primarily responsible for those problems. Our discussion exposes several contradictions, trade-offs and justice implications of CFM that have remained largely unrecognized. We conclude by providing recommendations for a more just approach that centers a rights-needs-merit rationale. Our analysis is relevant for community-based conservation efforts around the globe. • We challenge the assumption that CFM initiatives are inherently just. • By imposing restrictions, CFM can perpetuate (autonomy) rights violations. • Imposing conservation-economy trade-offs on impoverished groups furthers inequalities. • CFM costs are even more unfair given communities are not the main driver of climate change. • We call for a more just approach to CFM that centers a rights-needs-merit rationale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nepal's forest cover nearly doubled over the last three decades. While Community Forest (CF) management and agricultural abandonment are primary drivers of forest cover expansion, the contribution of afforestation on privately managed land is not well documented. We mapped forest cover change from 1988 through 2016 in 40 privately managed sites that transitioned from agriculture to forest and assessed how agricultural abandonment influenced private land management and afforestation. We used a mixed method analysis to integrate our 29-year Landsat satellite image-based record of annual forest cover with interview data on historical land cover and land use dynamics from 65 land managers in Bagmati Province. We find that privately managed land accounted for 37% of local forest cover gain, with mean forest area within private forests growing from 9% to 59%. Land managers identified two factors driving these gains on private land: implementation of CF management in adjacent government forests and out-migration. These previously undocumented linkages between forest cover gain on private land and CF management merits further research in community forests and calls for greater policy and technical support for small-scale timber growers and rural households who rely on private forests for income generation. • 29-year remote sensing analysis links forest change to migration & community Forestry. • CF management inspired farmers to grow forest resources on their private land. • Out-migration induced agricultural abandonment was followed by smallholder forestry. • Land managers actively shifted land use in response to community forestry & migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the increasing scale of wildfire and forest health challenges in the West, the Intertribal Timber Council, a nonprofit consortium of American Indian Tribes and Alaska Native corporations, proposed creating "Anchor Forests," where a Tribe would convene neighboring landowners to collectively manage the landscape across property boundaries. This concept has sparked conversation but has not been fully implemented. Amid shifts toward both collaborative decision making and Tribal partnerships on federal forestlands, we asked, "why did the Anchor Forest concept emerge, and what can the field of forest governance learn from its development?" Through qualitative analysis of documents and interviews, we show how Anchor Forests could expand spatial-temporal scales of forest management. We highlight how Tribal leadership could overcome past governance barriers through their sovereign authority and long-term forestry expertise and knowledge. We describe how this concept could function as a tool to enact change within rigid forest-management institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservation and development practitioners increasingly promote community forestry as a way to conserve ecosystem services, consolidate resource rights, and reduce poverty. However, outcomes of community forestry have been mixed; many initiatives failed to achieve intended objectives. There is a rich literature on institutional arrangements of community forestry, but there has been little effort to examine the role of socioeconomic, market, and biophysical factors in shaping both land-cover change dynamics and individual and collective livelihood outcomes. We systematically reviewed the peer-reviewed literature on community forestry to examine and quantify existing knowledge gaps in the community-forestry literature relative to these factors. In examining 697 cases of community forest management (CFM), extracted from 267 peer-reviewed publications, we found 3 key trends that limit understanding of community forestry. First, we found substantial data gaps linking population dynamics, market forces, and biophysical characteristics to both environmental and livelihood outcomes. Second, most studies focused on environmental outcomes, and the majority of studies that assessed socioeconomic outcomes relied on qualitative data, making comparisons across cases difficult. Finally, there was a heavy bias toward studies on South Asian forests, indicating that the literature on community forestry may not be representative of decentralization policies and CFM globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralizing forest control to community-based groups is a widely promoted form of governance around the world. Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) in Ghana, a form of forest decentralization, is a relatively recent government strategy to reduce forest loss, promote restoration, and improve local control and participation in resource management. This paper examines the powers devolved to CREMAs in Ghana, using a political ecology lens. Using a variety of qualitative research methods, the paper found that CREMAs receive limited powers from the State and these powers mainly restrict local access to resources, an action the State has often failed at. The results also suggest that CREMAs impose responsibility on local people without accompanying resources and often at the expense of security and safety of local volunteer enforcers. The findings also highlight the lack of coherence between forest decentralization and exiting political decentralization processes; the incoherence between the different institutional regulations for CREMAs; and tensions between new and traditional forms of local resource governance. The study suggests that critical approaches to evaluating the performance of decentralized regimes could be a useful approach to understanding the drivers of vulnerability among local resource users, dependents, and their institutions. • Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) burden local people with forest protection with little reward. • Absence of resource transfer from the state and local forest control set CREMAs up for potential collapse. • CREMAs highlight the incoherencies in political and forest decentralization, and traditional resource management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community forestry and related small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs) can contribute towards the achievement of REDD+ goals, since they can promote sustainable use and conservation of forests and, therefore, a reduction in forest-related carbon emissions. Additionally, they can improve the quality of life of forest-dependant people by generating alternative sources of income and employment. However, SMFEs often face a number of challenges, including non-conducive policy environments, inadequate business skills, and moreover, limited access to financial services. In this paper, we propose to direct a portion of REDD+ readiness efforts towards promoting the generation of an enabling environment for SMFEs that includes: the construction of an adequate Business Environment (BE), the provision of Business Development Services (BDS) and better access to Financial Services (FS). With the application of this framework, SMFEs will be more likely to proliferate and succeed, leading to enhanced community resilience and empowerment, in addition to increasing the likelihood of forest carbon stock permanence and the long term achievement of REDD+ goals. Opportunities and challenges of applying this approach in Latin America are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Forests & Livelihoods: Assessment, Research, and Engagement (FLARE) Community of Practice conference sponsored by the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) and other non-government organizations on November 27 to 30, 2015 in France. Topics of the conference include workshops and seminars that highlight the interventions and assessment on the effectivity of forest-based livelihood, forest dependence and forest governance and landscapes.