Is Community Forestry Open for Business?

Community forestry (CF) has been seen as an optimal method for dealing with the many challenges facing forests in Asia-Pacific region. Many stakeholders, however, are questioning whether CF is proving to be an effective way to improve the livelihoods of the community. This work examines why these doubts persist, putting forward recommendations for addressing barriers to CF development, focusing particularly on commercialization, with the rationale being that after tenure it is the driving force for successful CF.

The aim of the paper, based on the hypothesis that CF often struggles to deliver on various economic, environmental and social levels, is to examine the causes of these struggles and the different methods employed by key actors for addressing the challenges.