This handbook provides a comprehensive overview and cutting-edge assessment of community forestry.

Containing contributions from academics, practitioners, and professionals, the Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry presents a truly global overview with case studies drawn from across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The Handbook begins with an overview of the chapters and a discussion of the concept of community forestry and the key issues. Topics as wide-ranging as Indigenous forestry, conservation and ecosystem management, relationships with industrial forestry, trade and supply systems, land tenure and land grabbing, and climate change are addressed. The Handbook also focuses on governance, looking at the range of approaches employed, including multi-level governance and rights-based approaches, and the principal actors involved from local communities and Indigenous Peoples to governments and national and international non-governmental organisations. The Handbook reveals the importance of the historical context to community forestry and the effects of power and politics. Importantly, the Handbook not only focuses on successful examples of community forestry, but also addresses failures in order to highlight the key challenges we are still facing and potential solutions.

The Routledge Handbook of Community Forestry is essential reading for academics, professionals, and practitioners interested in forestry, natural resource management, conservation, and sustainable development.

Janette Bulkan is an associate professor in the Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Canada. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Sustainable Forestry and an associate editor of Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Guyana's GREEN Institute.

John Palmer is a senior associate linked to the Forest Management Trust (MT, USA) and works on tropical and international forestry issues. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Forestry Review.

Anne M. Larson is a principal scientist at CIFOR, the Center for International Forestry Research and Leader of the team on Equal Opportunities, Gender, Justice and Tenure. She is a member of the council of the International Land Coalition (ILC) and the board of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

Mary Hobley has more than 30 years’ experience working in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe, concentrating on forestry, social anthropology, and political science. She works with a broad range of actors, including senior government, local government, private sector, non-government, and civil society groups.