Social Forestry and its most well-known variant, Community Forestry, have been practiced almost as long as people have used forests. During this time, forests have provided people with countless goods and services, including wood, medicine, food, clean water and recreation. In making use of forest resources, people throughout history have frequently organized themselves and established both formal and informal rules.

However, just as the discipline of Forestry had previously limited and concentrated the function of forests to the timber it provides, the popular understanding of...