Whilst community forestry programmes have combined sustainable forestry with community empowerment and poverty alleviation since the late 1970s, the role of intermediary organisations in shaping the technical and political capacities of forest user groups has rarely been systematically studied. The long-term durability of community forestry groups has been linked with the congruence between local and national determinations of tenure rights, and the involvement of local communities in determining the ‘rules' that govern the management of the forests.

Community forestry (CF) was initiated in the 1970s as a way to empower communities, alleviate poverty and manage forests. Intermediary organisations are considered to have played a critical role in the sustainability and equitability of community forest management. This study analyses a second-tier institution, ACOFOP [Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén], founded in the mid-1990s by local people in the Maya Biosphere Reserve [MBR] of Guatemala. ACOFOP has been

An agroforester from Zimbabwe describes how a system of ?tree tenure? encourages sustainable harvesting of indigenous fruit trees, explains ways of adding value to the fruit, and how domestication of indigenous fruit trees can take the pressure off natural forests.

These proceedings present results from research done for a decade in the CIFOR project Site Management and Productivity in Tropical Plantations. They include papers presented at a workshop in Brazil in November 2004 and then updated at a workshop in November 2006 at Bogor, Indonesia. These papers complement the proceedings in the series published by CIFOR in 2004, 2000, and 1999. Currently the research network includes 16 sites in 8 countries representing a range of biophysical environments, species, productivity potentials and management strategies.

A co-ordinator of the Kenya Forests Working Group describes how it has been working with local forest management committees, to set up forest use agreements and educate communities in improved forest management methods.

An NGO in Zambia has volunteers living with forest communities, in order to build up trust and work together on alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture.