Upskilling Community Forest Managers

This initiative is implemented by RECOFTC Thailand, a regional leader in community forestry supporting local communities to sustainably manage forest resources through capacity building, research, and policy engagement across Southeast Asia. RECOFTC has over four decades of experience strengthening community forest management systems and has developed proven methodologies for building local planning capacity.
The programme addresses urgent need: Thailand has approximately 11,984 registered community forests covering 1.07 million hectares—about 6% of national forest cover—yet most communities lack the skills to independently develop the management plans legally required every five years. Without proper plans based on actual forest assessments, communities cannot effectively protect forests from threats, respond to climate change, maintain biodiversity, or demonstrate their management capacity to government authorities.
The CF-NET Index is a unique assessment tool measuring community forest management across nine indicators covering environmental factors (forest health, biodiversity, threat management capacity), social and economic factors (forest resource dependence, benefit sharing, community enterprises), and governance (planning and monitoring, participation, committee effectiveness). Scores range from 0.00 (very low) to 3.00 (very high), providing communities with clear benchmarks for improvement. Success is measured through number of forest leaders trained (approximately 10 per cohort), improved CFMP quality assessed against official standards, increased use of digital forest data tools, and measurable CF-NET Index score improvements demonstrating strengthened forest governance and management. Learn more at thaicfnet.org and recoftc.org.