For over two decades, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for community forestry has occurred in tropical countries. However, community forests represent just over 1% of the total FSC-certified forest area worldwide. Certification can promote more socially and environmentally responsible forest management while delivering economic returns to communities, but communities face challenges to obtaining, maintaining, and benefiting from it. Our analysis of the published literature finds that community forestry certification delivers many social and environmental benefits, often more so than economic returns, highlighting the importance of addressing these challenges so that potential benefits can be realized. The FSC has pursued numerous design innovations to help communities overcome challenges to certification, summarized here. We draw on case studies from Mexico, Brazil, and Tanzania to examine the roles that public and private stakeholders at different scales can play in supporting community forestry certification, and the benefits they obtain from engagement. We find that international, national, and local governments and NGOs, business partners and other market chain actors, and FSC and third-party certification bodies all have critical support roles to play. We also find that engagement often aligns with their interests, benefiting them. Systematically documenting the benefits of community forestry certification for diverse actors across scales, communicating about these benefits, and encouraging engaged actors to recruit other stakeholders may be key to helping community forestry initiatives obtain and maintain certification, and scaling it up. Doing so could help increase biodiversity conservation, sustain forest ecosystem services, and alleviate poverty in tropical countries.

二十多年来，社区林业的森林管理委员会 (FSC) 认证已在热带国家进行。然而，社区森林仅占全球 FSC 认证森林总面积的 1% 以上。认证可以促进对社会和环境更负责任的森林管理，同时为社区带来经济回报，但社区在获取、维护和从中受益方面面临挑战。我们对已发表文献的分析发现，社区林业认证带来了许多社会和环境效益，通常比经济回报更重要，强调了应对这些挑战以实现潜在效益的重要性。FSC 进行了许多设计创新，以帮助社区克服认证挑战，总结如下。我们借鉴墨西哥、巴西和坦桑尼亚的案例研究，研究不同规模的公共和私人利益相关者在支持社区林业认证方面可以发挥的作用，以及他们从参与中获得的好处。我们发现，国际、国家和地方政府和非政府组织、商业伙伴和其他市场链参与者，以及 FSC 和第三方认证机构都可以发挥关键的支持作用。我们还发现，参与往往符合他们的利益，使他们受益。系统地记录社区林业认证为不同规模的不同参与者带来的好处，就这些好处进行交流，并鼓励参与的参与者招募其他利益相关者，这可能是帮助社区林业计划获得和维持认证并扩大认证的关键。