Community forest management (CFM) is increasingly recognised as a potentially effective way of maintaining forests, especially in the Global South. Despite the growing adoption of this approach, the results have been mixed and there is a need to explore both the ways in which a wider range of benefits can be obtained and how CFM can be implemented more effectively. New forest legislation on community forest management in the Southern Region of Ethiopia in 2012, alongside the development of a highly devolved method of CFM, provided a natural experiment for testing the effectiveness of this method as a way of maintaining forest and also supporting biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. The specific circumstances and details of the methods applied also provided an opportunity to compare this approach against other experiences of CFM to assess factors seen to be influencing success. This study was undertaken in an area of montane forest in south-west Ethiopia, which includes some of the remaining stands of wild Coffea arabica, and so it also sought to create supportive conditions for the in situ conservation of the wild coffee. Analyses of this approach to CFM over the six years show that the loss of forest was reduced to 0.18% per annum in the CFM managed areas compared to 2.6% per annum in the non-CFM forest, while biodiversity, in terms of species diversity, richness and evenness of distribution, was maintained in the natural forest managed under CFM. Carbon storage also increased in the natural forest managed under CFM. While the long-term results will only be seen after several decades, the findings show that the use of a highly devolved form of CFM, responding to felt needs and building up a community of practice were some of the positive influences which helped in achieving multiple impacts towards sustainable forest management and wild coffee conservation.

社区森林管理（CFM）日益被公认为是维护森林的潜在有效方法，尤其是在全球南方。尽管越来越多地采用这种方法，但结果却是好坏参半，有必要探索获得更大范围收益的方法以及如何更有效地实施CFM。2012年，埃塞俄比亚南部地区有关社区森林管理的新森林立法，连同高度分散的CFM方法的发展，为测试该方法作为维护森林和支持生物多样性保护的有效性提供了自然实验。碳储存。所用方法的具体情况和细节也为将这种方法与CFM的其他经验进行比较提供了机会，以评估被认为影响成功的因素。这项研究是在埃塞俄比亚西南部的山地森林地区进行的，其中包括一些剩余的野生林分阿拉伯咖啡，因此它还试图为原位创造支持条件保护野生咖啡。对六年来这种CFM方法的分析表明，在CFM管理区域，森林损失每年减少到0.18％，而在非CFM森林中，森林损失每年是2.6％，而就物种多样性而言，生物多样性在CFM管理下的天然林中保持了分布的丰富性和均匀性。在CFM管理下的天然林中，碳储量也增加了。尽管只有几十年才能看到长期的结果，但研究结果表明，使用高度分散的CFM，响应人们的需求并建立实践社区是一些有助于实现多种目标的积极影响。对可持续森林管理和野咖啡保护的影响。