CIFOR–ICRAF publishes over 750 publications every year on agroforestry, forests and climate change, landscape restoration, rights, forest policy and much more – in multiple languages.

CIFOR–ICRAF addresses local challenges and opportunities while providing solutions to global problems for forests, landscapes, people and the planet.

We deliver actionable evidence and solutions to transform how land is used and how food is produced: conserving and restoring ecosystems, responding to the global climate, malnutrition, biodiversity and desertification crises. In short, improving people’s lives.

Social sustainability in the forest

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This article is a brief progress report of a project aiming to test criteria and indicators for the social dimensions of sustainable forest management. It explains our conceptual starting point for our research, including a defintion of well-being, our perspective on the actions of people, and brief mention of intergenerational distribution. We then provide an account of what exactly has been done in the field tests, followed by a section on lessons learned. We conclude with some ideas for next steps, and with a summary of principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers pertaining to people's roles in sustainable forest management.

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