This publication sets out to provide a review of how community forestry has evolved over the period since it first came to prominence in the mid-1970s. 'Community forestry' is interpreted as "any situation that intimately involves local people in forestry activity" (FAO, 1978). It therefore covers a broad range of linkages among people, forests and the outputs of forests, from forestdwelling communities to populations who draw on nearby forests for part of their livelihood needs, and to those outside forests who manage tree stocks on farmland in order to sustain flows of forest outputs, or who engage in artisanal and other local small-scale commercial production and trade of forest products.