Certification of responsible/sustainable forest management has been promoted as a tool for maintaining forest values (i.e. biophysical, social, economic, and policy) for more than twenty years. We can now draw on this experience to identify the real contributions of forest management certification to the maintenance or improvement of a range of forest values, including the mitigation of forest degradation. Here we provide the foundations for such an evaluation.

Given limited budgets for promoting the conservation and the responsible management of tropical forests, it is critical to identify the most effective interventions. Nevertheless, we recognize that there is no ‘silver bullet’,...

Brazil is a vast country with 463 million ha of forests, which represents 54.4% of its total area (851 million ha). More than 98% of all of the country’s forested areas are natural forests, in different degrees of use (SFB 2013). The two main forest biomes in Brazil are the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest is distributed along the coast, where approximately 70% of the Brazilian population lives. It has been exploited since colonial times, with only 14.5% of its original forested area remaining. The Amazon, on the opposite side of the country, remained almost intact until...

Since the mid-1990’s, when Brazil’s deforestation rates reached their highest point (i.e. in 1995 the annual rate reached almost 30,000 km²; INPE 2014), the management of tropical forests in the country has undergone major changes. Between 1994 and 2009 the Amazon lost approximately 15% of its territory (i.e. 53 million ha), but since 2005 there has been a reduction in the annual rate of deforestation (Santos et al. 2012; Nepstad et al. 2014; Börner et al. 2015). The Brazilian natural timber forest sector is relatively heterogeneous in terms of types and sizes of operating firms and the areas where timber...

The Brazilian Amazon contains 325.5 million ha of natural forest, of which 92% is public, with de jure tenure rights held by the federal or state governments (SFB 2013). Of this, 282 million ha are in State and Federal PAs, including National (FLONA) and State (FLOTA) Forests designated for multiple use management including timber production. However, historically, most logging in the Amazon occurred on private lands or on undesignated public lands.

Until the mid-1960s, the Amazon territories belonged primarily to the federal government and the states. Of the total registered land in 1960, 87% was covered in forests, including areas...

Brazil’s natural tropical forest cover is nearly three times wider than that of the world’s next most forest-rich region, the Congo Basin. It has experienced considerable forest loss, especially over the last two decades. Most of the forests are located in the Amazon Basin, which includes a variety of forest types.

Brazil has been the site of dynamic political-economic and social experiments over the past few decades, with interactions occurring among new institutional regimes, legal frameworks and associated policies, and social actors, infrastructure development, and demography. These interactions have shaped the development of forested landscapes, and have helped to establish...