Forest conservation effectiveness of community forests may decline in the future: Evidence from Cambodia

Community forests (CFs) have been widely established in tropical countries as a tool to achieve forest conservation. Many studies have shown that CFs can contribute to the reduction of deforestation, yet studies that evaluate the contribution of CFs to reducing forest degradation and facilitating forest recovery remain scarce. We investigated the ability of CFs to prevent deforestation and forest degradation and to facilitate forest recovery by using a country-scale longitudinal tree canopy cover and forest cover data set in Cambodia. We found that CFs can prevent both forest degradation and deforestation, but we did not observe a forest recovery effect. We also found that recently established CFs are not effective for forest conservation compared with older CFs. We conclude that, to date, CFs are an effective forest conservation tool; however, this does not necessarily mean that new CFs will be as effective as established ones.