Successful 20 years of community forest management in Guatemala informs an
Integrated Community Forest Management pathway to support scaling
Emmanuelle Berenger1, Samantha Morrissey2
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Rainforest Alliance, Sustainable Forest Management Lead, eberenger@ra.org
Rainforest Alliance, Forest Sector Lead, smorrissey@ra.org

Abstract
Research increasingly highlights the powerful link between environmental and social challenges andoutcomes, and how local communities can be effective guardians of the forest.
In the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, which Rainforest Alliance supports since more than 20
years, a broad alliance has been made between forest communities, local and national government
bodies, companies, as well as academia and implementing partners. This public-private alliancesupports the local population in its responsible management of forests, as a powerful tool contributing
to peace and social justice, as well as to human development. Impact studies show that the
deforestation rate in the forest concessions is near zero, while protected areas and buffer zones
nearby suffered high deforestation levels, and that the initiative contributes to all the 17 SDGs.
Based on a learning inventory of the Rainforest Alliances’ work in Guatemala and other countries it
operates in, we have broaden our approach in order to catalyze long-term transformation at scale.
We have developed and tested tools and methods to foster an enabling environment and to support
the deployment of viable community-based forest enterprises, implementing sustainable forest
management, restoration or reforestation, and providing equitable benefits. We have organized thisapproach in an Integrated Community Forest Implementation pathway which is presented in moredetail in this paper.
To deploy this pathway, a unique coalition of corporate stakeholders, forest communities, Indigenous
Peoples and regional implementing partners are uniting with the Rainforest Alliance within its Forest
Allies Community of Practice. Using the Integrated Community Forest Management approach, weleverage the power of partnerships to protect and restore forests in critical landscapes while also
empowering communities and improving livelihoods. Because we believe the best guardians of theforest are those who make their living from it.
Keywords: Adaptive and integrated management, Community Forest; Sustainable forest
management, Economic Development, Partnerships.

Introduction, scope and main objectives
Most societies have developed at the expense of forests by converting them to other land uses, mostly
agriculture. However, 1.6 billion people still depend on forest landscapes for food, fuel, timber, and nontimber forest products, with a combined gross annual value of US$ 1.3 trillion – making them collectively,
1the largest private sector in the world (Macqueen et al. 2020). Furthermore, almost one third of forests
are under some form of community based or smallholder management, with studies showing an upward
trend that will hopefully continue (RRI 2020).
With the right approach, resources can be harnessed for the benefit of the forests and people. Over the
past decade there has been a notable shift from a dichotomy between industrial concessions andprotected forest areas, towards ‘rights-based’ community forestry and biocultural conservation, buildingon the deep interdependence between local cultural heritage and the environment (Kaimowitz andTomaselli 2020). But while an important first step, granting forest tenure rights to communities does not
automatically halt deforestation and forest degradation, nor improve livelihoods, as the success ofcommunity forestry depends on a number of conditions (Kusters and de Graaf 2019).
For years, community forestry concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve have proved the effectivenessof the Rainforest Alliance market-based approach to supporting local communities while protecting theenvironment. Being the core geographic focus for Rainforest Alliance regarding technical assistance inthe forestry sector, the success here has driven and inspired community forest enterprises elsewhere in
the world, from Mexico to Cameroon and Indonesia.
This paper draws lessons from the Maya Biosphere Reserve and offers a pathway for supporting thedevelopment of community forestry, harnessing the power of the private sector alongside communities
in a new partnership – the Forest Allies community of practice.

Methodology/approach
The Maya Biosphere Reserve covers 5 million acres (2.1 million hectares) in Petén Province, northern
Guatemala. Recognized by UNESCO in 1990, it is home to the largest remaining natural forest block in
Mesoamerica, the selva Maya. In this dense forest, nine government-granted community forestry
concessions conserve a total of 355,000 hectares. Local communities have exclusive rights to sustainably
manage their forest, extracting, processing and selling timber and non-timber forest products while
ensuring long term forest health and integrity in a landscape once known for crisis-level deforestationand poverty.
For more than 20 years, Rainforest Alliance has supported these community forest concessions withsupport of USAID, building a broad alliance between forest communities, local and national
government institutions, companies, local NGOs, academia, and implementing partners. The paper
reports on numerous studies that have investigated the environmental and social impact of theapproach (Grogan et al. 2015, Gilmour 2016, Polisar et al. 2016, CONAP and WCS 2018, Rainforest
Alliance 2018, Stoian et al. 2018, Castillo Cruz 2020). This was complemented by an independent
learning inventory and assessment of Rainforest Alliance’s experience in the reserve over two
decades, with additional interviews and external reviews that focused on tools, methods andapproaches, completed with learning from community forestry in other countries including
Cameroon, Mexico, Nepal and Peru.
Analysis of the results of these studies informed the building of a Rainforest Alliance pathway to support
the scaling up and deployment of community forest projects worldwide.

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Results
Environmental and social impacts
The Maya Biosphere Reserve community forest concessions consistently outperform traditional
conservation approaches. The deforestation rate in these forest concessions is almost zero, while nearby
protected areas and buffer zones suffered high deforestation levels (Figure 1). Levels of poverty in theconcessions are also significantly lower than in other parts of Guatemala, making out-migration virtually
unheard of (Rainforest Alliance 2018, Stoian et al. 2018).
Consolidated research in a State of the World’s Forests (FAO and UNEP 2020) case study highlight thefollowing biodiversity results: sustainable levels of timber harvesting (Grogan et al. 2015), successful
control of forest fires (Figure 2) and reduced incidence of fire during El Niño and La Niña years (CONAP
and WCS 2018), and maintenance of jaguar populations (Polisar et al. 2016).

Fig. 1: Rate of deforestation (left) in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (Hodgdon et al. 2015)

Fig. 2: Forest fires in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, CEMEC-CONAP-WCS
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Socioeconomic outcomes include increases in timber revenues, employment opportunities, social
investments, capacity building and access to finance. Between 2012 and 2016, community earned US$25
million from timber sales alone. In concessions with more diversified production including non-timber
forest products and a greater capacity for value addition, the income of participating households was
1.6–2.8 times higher than the poverty line. Out-migration is reduced, employment opportunities for
women increased, and higher education achieved (Stoian et al. 2018).
Analysis of the contribution of the concessions confirmed the holistic impacts that contributed to all 17
SDGs, with specific contributions to 45 of the 162 targets (Castillo Cruz 2020). Additionally, strong andeffective community forest enterprises demonstrate the capacity to withstand internal and external
shocks (Gilmour 2016), which is critical in times of economic crisis and climate change.

Eight lessons learned from 20 years’ experience
The Maya Biosphere model has demonstrated on the ground impacts, illustrating community
forestry’s potential as a global solution to forest degradation and deforestation. However, a global
learning inventory showed that different conditions make exact replication of this approach difficult.
In many countries, the absence of local rights over forests and trees do not allow for the developmentof forestry enterprises. In places where such rights are recognized, other factors make legal forest
product harvesting and sale by communities difficult, such as administrative burden, and a lack ofaccess to markets, knowledge and finance. Eight key lessons from the Rainforest Alliance’s learning
inventory are summarized below.
Lesson 1. Intervention strategies needs to fit local contexts
For support to be effective, interventions must focus on where the real needs lie. To determine suchneeds, site-specific theories of change should be developed through participatory processes withlocal stakeholders, based on analyses of the following four enabling conditions for successfulprojects.
(i)
Secure rights to manage forests, exclude others, and sell forest products or services.
(ii)
Equitable and fair governance, social organization and management capacity, thatprovides effective leadership and technical knowledge.
(iii)
A viable social enterprise model that produces financial benefits sufficient to reinvest,
while also providing equitable economic benefits.
(iv)
Strong alliances with national and local government, donors, civil society organizations,producer associations, and private sector entities.
Intervention strategies and priority activities can then be defined following an assessment of wherea site falls with respect to each of these four enabling conditions.
Lesson 2. Building successful community forest enterprises takes time, investment and multiscalealliances
Wherever community forest enterprises have achieved durable success at scale – e.g. in Mexico,
Guatemala or Nepal – they have been supported by government, donors and a broad alliance ofinternational and local organizations over decades. In the Maya Biosphere Reserve, USAID has
maintained support over 25 years, and a large number of technical-assistance bodies have worked
with the community concessions since their establishment. For community forestry to go to scale in
new geographies, there is a need to mobilize large investments over multiple project cycles, working
through alliances with a range of local, national and international partners.

4Lesson 3. Social governance is foundational, as is continuity in enterprise administration
Without a strong social basis for governance, investments in forest management enterprises haveinherent risks. In communities where forestry operations are stalled or backsliding, governanceproblems are often the main issue, rather than resource availability, markets or finance. Whenfunctioning enterprise governance structures are in place, with adequate administrative and businesscapacity, durable success lies in the establishment of mechanisms to cope with leadership transitions.
Also, of those that are doing well, almost all established some kind of separate, permanent institution
to manage the forest enterprise.
Lesson 4. Grassroots organizations are the foundation of long term successAt the core of successful community forests – especially where a measure of scale has been achieved– are local organizations. They must have legitimacy in the community, be locally owned, represent
local interests in territorial planning and management, resource use and enterprise development, as
well as be part of policy reform agendas. They are help communities to stand up to organized crime,
violence, and other human rights violations. International organizations must ensure that partnerships
with grassroots groups genuinely strengthen them, rather than competing with them for resources
and attention.
Lesson 5. Associations can be powerful and positive intermediaries
Communities that have achieved durable success with their forest enterprises are nearly always
supported by committed individuals and strong associations. Some are more political in nature, whileothers focus on technical service provision, product aggregation, value-added processing, and/or
accessing finance and new markets. Such associations are particularly important for smaller and more
remote forestry communities that are not likely to achieve ‘five-star’ status on their own.
Lesson 6. Market-based approaches must work from the bottom up
It is undoubtedly the case that a market focus is fundamental. In everything from forest management
planning, to investment strategy, out to business development, a forest enterprise needs to base its
vision on what can actually be sold, as the enterprise must make a profit. And while it is right to lookfor ways to maximize the value of a community forest through deals with international buyers, themain focus must be from a bottom-up perspective, looking realistically at what the actual demand isin local and regional markets.
Lesson 7. Certification is not a panacea, but it can help
Certification has not significantly improved community forest management in the tropics. It has notbeen maintained at scale amongst enterprises where it is not required, or is heavily subsidized. But it
can have other benefits, especially with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®) certification that allows
communities to overcome otherwise cumbersome government regulations, and as a way to identify
problems and map action plans for improvement. Efforts should continue to make FSC more accessible
to communities, while being realistic about the benefits that certification can actually deliver.
Lesson 8. Diversification reduces risk and is a benefit multiplier
The most successful community forest enterprises are those that diversify. The more reliance on asingle species or product, the greater the exposure to risk, and the fewer benefits will be delivered toa smaller number of people. Diversifying enterprises to include a broader range of products like nontimber forest products (NTFPs) or payment for environmental services (PES) can also create different
types of jobs, many of which may be open to women, youth, and people from more marginalized
households.

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The integrated community forest management pathway
As seen in the eight lessons above, not all contexts enable successful community forest enterprises. A
strong focus is often needed on more fundamental issues, such as tenure security, land use, and social
governance as building blocks. As a result, the Rainforest Alliance has broadened its approach towards
an Integrated Community Forest Management (ICFM) pathway, which is an articulation of this holistic,
inclusive, context-based concept (Figure 3).

Fig. 3: The Rainforest Alliance’s integrated community forest management (ICFM) pathway,
Rainforest Alliance (2021)
Embodying the Rainforest Alliance vision of people and nature thriving in harmony, integrated
community forest management contributes to a landscape management approach that engages
multiple actors at multiple scales (Rainforest Alliance 2020):•
Supporting community forest enterprises through training, tools and knowledge to provide
sustained economic development and foster strong social governance and inclusion, providing
equitable benefits to households, incorporating young people in activities, and promoting
gender equality and women’s empowerment.
•
Implementing sustainable forest management, restoration or reforestation to reduce forest
degradation and deforestation, and increase forest cover, biodiversity and carbon capture.
•
Managing the forest in harmony with other crops and ecosystems in the landscape.
•
Fostering secure rights to forests, and access to alliances, finance and markets, to create anenabling environment for successful community forest enterprises at scale.
Recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach or single model for community forestry, thispathway serves as guidance which needs to be tailored to local contexts using a participatory
approach.

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Discussion
While the lessons learned during the Rainforest Alliance learning inventory and the resulting pathway
underscore the importance of a bottom-up approach, it is clearly difficult to take any community
forestry model to scale without top-down action. In the few cases where community forest
management in natural forests has gone to scale, it is assisted by state-driven measures including
favorable policies, sector-wide reform programs, and well-resourced extension services.
To develop successful community forests, partnerships between communities and government,
NGOs, and private companies are needed. One key challenge is to secure financing and make itavailable over a long period. Bilateral and multilateral donors will thus continue to play a central role,though private sector funding will be become more critical over time, as companies play an importantrole in securing access to markets for responsibly produced and certified community forest products.
They do so by creating partnerships with local communities to develop new value chains, byaddressing supply chain challenges, and by connecting consumers to producers.
But if the proposed pathway is to be mobilized at scale, long-term partnerships with companies mustbe forged beyond supply chains, to secure an enabling environment at the landscape level. This work,
is in essence, complementary to certification and favors it. Focusing on providing this enabling
environment to community forests in critical landscapes, Forest Allies is the Rainforest Alliance’s main
vehicle. It also builds on the finding that successful outcomes from community forestry can be
explained partly by whether there is a community of practice linking local people to external
stakeholders for mutual learning (Macqueen and Mayers 2020).
Through the Forest Allies community of practice, the Rainforest Alliance brings together companies,
regional civil society organizations and forest communities to form powerful partnerships that support
an integrated community forest management approach. The initiative contributes to a pool of capitalused to invest directly in community forest enterprises, and fosters a foundation of mutual respect,
trust, and a shared vision and joint actions between forest communities and markets, and that aims
at further engaging governments.

Conclusions/ wider implications of findings
As seen from the Maya Biosphere Reserve case study, the best guardians of the forest are those who
make their living from it. But forest communities often lack access to the resources and support thatwould enable their enterprises to meet their full economic potential. Drawing lessons on successful
approaches of community forests, from here and elsewhere, Rainforest Alliance has identified
enabling conditions, entry points and a global integrated community forest management (ICFM)
pathway, which describes a comprehensive and scalable approach that protects natural forests bypartnering with communities, to build strong, equitable, local economies.
Successful community forests can only be achieved through and by communities and theirorganizations. But this requires collaboration, and that all actors take some responsibility. For the
Rainforest Alliance, this takes place via Forest Allies, where business partners support the ICFM
pathway through investment that supports an enabling environment through a community ofpractice, as well as encouraging responsible supply chains as detailed in the Rainforest Alliance’s
accountability framework initiative.

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The public sector can promote community forestry through enabling policies and funding over thelong term, which has been lacking in most countries – Guatemala, Mexico and Nepal being exceptions.
But with a building momentum behind the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the Paris Climate
Agreement, there may be hope for more robust financing for community forests, and investments tied
to post-COVID ‘green recovery’ plans. Finally, consumers can give preference to products coming fromwell-managed community forests.
This paper hopes to spark discussion about the guiding principles of integrated community forest
management. The Rainforest Alliance invites partners from private sector, public sectors and civilsociety to help innovate, constructively review and comment on interventions, and hold it accountable
to its principles, vision, mission, and goals. Together, we are inspired to make the coming years a timeof successful ecosystem protection and restoration.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the reviewers and contributors to this paper, in particular Jose Roman
Carrera, Partnership director at the Rainforest Alliance and conservation leader in the Maya Biosphere
Reserve, Benjamin Hodgdon, independent consultant and former Rainforest Alliance employee, andDuncan MacQueen, Principal Researcher and Team Leader – Forests and Prosperity, at theInternational Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
The views expressed in this information product are those of the author(s) and do not necessarilyreflect the views or policies of FAO or any partner organizations.

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