Two systematic literature reviews of scientific research on the environmental impacts of forest certifications and community forest management at a global scale

Summary

Forest certifications (FCs) and community forest management (CFM) are two major forest governance interventions whose aim is to reverse forest degradation and deforestation, while providing socio-economic benefits to the people involved. Despite being applied for more than a quarter of a century, there is a dearth of scientific evidence on the environmental impacts in the long- and short-term that these governance interventions have on the ground. Evidence is also needed to elucidate the governance mechanisms and contextual factors that facilitate the achievement of positive impacts. To fill these knowledge gaps, we conducted two systematic literature reviews (SLRs) comprising sixty-five publications in total, which collectively cover a total forest area of around 19 million hectares. Of these publications, only thirteen can be considered ‘sufficiently rigorous’ according to CEE and 3ie standards. The evidence of the reported environmental impacts of both FCs and CFM nonetheless shows clear trends towards (strong) positive impacts on the ground, with only six studies reporting no impact and only two studies, concerning FCs, reporting negative impacts. However, given the small sample size of the (rigorous) publications, we cannot make strong generalizing statements about the impacts that these interventions actually have on the ground. Moreover, both SLRs highlighted serious evidence gaps concerning the impacts that both forest governance interventions have on fauna and ecosystem services. Governance mechanisms most associated with positive impacts in the SLR on FCs were ‘institutions’, whereas for CFM the combination of ‘institutions’, ‘incentives’ and ‘information’ appears to be necessary to see positive impacts. As far as additional contextual factors are concerned, the political environment in which FCs are being implemented emerged as one important enabling factor for achieving positive impacts, together with the biophysical characteristics of the forests. For CFM, a combination of contextual factors already identified by the work of IFRI (2015) enables positive impacts, namely resource system characteristics, user group characteristics, and the biophysical characteristics of the forests.