Governments around the world increasingly seek to manage their forests with the collaboration of the people living nearby. Ministries of forestry or their equivalents usually do this by offering local people access to selected forest products or forest land, income from forest resources, or opportunities for communicating with government forestry officials. In return, the agency obliges local people to cooperate in managing the forests around them by protecting existing forest or by planting trees.

A heated debate has been going on for roughly three decades about who should hold stewardship over Asia’s tropical forests. This essay reviews how the debate evolved. Communal forestry advocates like NGOs point out that local groups living in remote corners of countries like Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India have been managing forests for centuries. They provide examples of successful precolonial communal management practices, which eventually gave way to commercial interests in the late nineteenth century.

Between March 1997 and February 1998 three tests of Criteria and Indicators (C&I) for assessing the sustainability of community-managed forests were conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research. The tests, each lasting approximately one month, were sited in humid forest in Central Province, Cameroon; Sanggau, West Kalimantan, Indonesia; and in the Arapiuns river basin, Para, Brazil.

This case study report examines relevant factors influencing village life and household well-being since decentralization has been practiced in local government of Kutai in Indonesia. The principal aim is to understand the impacts of these processes and to compare local government’s policies on Kutai and Dayak Benuaq villages. This report looks on changes that had taken place in Jambuq and Jerang Melayu villages since the new district of Kutai Barat was established in 1999.

This Policy Brief: (1) outlines recommendations for change and improvement; (2) describes the legal and institutional infrastructure of decentralized forest management in Cameroon; (3) describes how basic mechanisms of decentralized forest management operate in practice; and (4) summarizes the findings of five years of World Resources Institute (WRI)-Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) research on decentralized forestry policy and practice.

Community managed forest systems embody a considerable portion of the wisdom, knowledge, and practical skills and management necessary for the sustainability of forest resources globally. These systems, however, are under threat in many ways, including from the rapid rate of change of their political, socio-economic, and biophysical contexts. Adapting forest management sufficiently quickly and effectively to meet these changes is both urgent and very challenging.

The CIFOR C&I Toolbox series is designed to help people make assessments of management in particular production forests where people live and work in and around the forests. The assessment include aspects relating to management, environment and human well-being. The toolbox has developed a generic set of principles, criteria and indicators, related method and samples.