This publication is based on a range of past studies on ICCAs conducted in several regions of the world in the last two decades, and, most recently, on 19 country level case studies. The latter were commissioned as part of a project on ICCA Recognition and Support, undertaken by the ICCA Consortium, coordinated by Kalpavriksh.

It also incorporates some key findings of a parallel project on ICCA Legislation, also undertaken by the ICCA Consortium, and coordinated by Natural Justice.

The publication intends to:

In order to strengthen collective efforts to address these challenges and capitalize on current opportunities to scale up community land rights around the world, from September 19-20, 2013, 180 participants came together in the town of Interlaken, Switzerland.

Community based forestry has the potential to contribute much more to achieving sustainable development and poverty reduction than is the case today. This paper describes and analyzes these potentials and demonstrates their feasibility with real world cases of community forest businesses and innovative policies and business partnerships.

Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM) is an integrative approach for implementing sustainable management of natural resources, based on a main hypothesis, that is: if there is a high degree of collaboration between stakeholders combined with a high adaptiveness of management systems, the result will be a higher degree of human well being and ecological sustainability. A worldwide network under the umbrella of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is engaged in researching the potential and methodological aspects related to ACM.