Lately, community-managed forests have been promoted as an alternative to centralized forest management for greater sustainability for forests, higher and more equitable livelihood outcomes for stakeholders, and less adversarial relationships between stakeholders and government agencies. While research had supported these ideals, there remains an inadequate understanding of whether these outcomes are synergistic or trade-offs, and how they vary in relation to biophysical, institutional, and socioeconomic contextual factors. To address these concerns, members of IFRI, CIFOR, and RECOFTC have begun writing a systematic review protocol that focuses on two of the main issues. First, it plans to assess whether published studies demonstrate that community-managed forests lead to improvements or declines in environmental and livelihood outcomes. Second, it aims to analyze how these outcomes vary across a range of biophysical, institutional. and socioeconomic contexts.

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