Examining the impact of governance on the effectiveness of forest protected areas: a systematic review of the evidence

Current governance modes of forest protected areas are multilevel and complex, with a variety of actors, different levels of power sharing, various formal and informal rules and vested interests. However, there is no synthesis of information on how different local governance modes and day-to-day decision-making processes may infl uence forest protected area effectiveness in terms of producing desired conservation outcomes. Given the rapid growth of the conservation and natural resource governance literature, there is potential value in synthesis of the existing information across-cases. Systematic review is a methodology developed to synthesise, appraise and communicate large amount of information, in a systematic, transparent and repeatable way. Here we present results of a systematic review conducted following Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Guidelines, synthesising the available qualitative and quantitative evidence from a large number and variety of literature sources, both peer reviewed and grey literature, to assess relative effectiveness of different forest proteced area governance modes with respect to multiple social and ecological outcomes.The results call attention to the research gaps in the fi eld of natural resource and conservation governance, provide input for future policy formulation and synthesise information to facilitate grounding of managers’ decisions on available scientific evidence.