  Citation: Yami, M.; Mekuria, W. Challenges in the Governance of Community-Managed Forests in Ethiopia: Review. Sustainability 2022, 14, 1478. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14031478 Academic Editor: Ivo Machar Received: 28 December 2021 Accepted: 25 January 2022 Published: 27 January 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Review Challenges in the Governance of Community-Managed Forests in Ethiopia: Review Mastewal Yami 1, * and Wolde Mekuria 2 1 Independent Researcher, Addis Ababa P.O. Box 5689, Ethiopia 2 International Water Management Institute (IWMI), East Africa and Nile Basin Office, Addis Ababa P.O. Box 5689, Ethiopia; w.bori@cgiar.org * Correspondence: mastewalyami@yahoo.com Abstract: A large proportion of the rural population in Ethiopia depends on community-managed forests for food security and livelihoods. However, the government and development partners have paid little attention to the governance challenges which limit the contributions of community- managed forests to food security and livelihoods. Also lacking is a synthesis of evidence relating to the requirements for improved governance to support the efforts of decision makers and practitioners. This paper attempts to review and synthesize the available evidence with the aim of identifying the requirements to achieve improved governance in community-managed forests. The results revealed that failure to devise benefit-sharing mechanisms which consider the heterogeneity of rural communities was prevalent. Interference of local authorities and elite capture in decision- making processes of forest and landscape restoration also compromised the willingness of rural communities to engage in collective action. Requirements such as the identification of the needs of specific categories of communities and enabling of the negotiation of diverse interests in the design and implementation of interventions could improve the governance of community-managed forests. Developing management plans and business model scenarios which balance the ecological and socio-economic goals at a local level in collaboration with rural communities is important to improve the governance of community-managed forests. There is also a need to revisit the practice of evaluating the performance of community-managed forests almost exclusively based on the goals of climate change adaptation and mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Keywords: deforestation; governance; incentives; livelihoods; restoration; sustainability 1. Introduction Several approaches have been employed for realizing sustainable governance of community-managed forests across Africa, including decentralized forest management, collaborative forest management, community-based forest management and joint forest management [1,2]. Participatory approaches might differ with respect to the attention given to ownership, rights, and responsibilities, yet they have commonalities in their attention to the need for enabling local level forest governance. The approaches promote the devolution of more power to local communities and local authorities from higher level bureaucracies in the day-to-day governance of community forests. The shift has gained in popularity and has led to the design and implementation of interventions which take into consideration local needs and priorities. Results have been mixed across countries due to differences in tenure security, com- munity mobilization, aspirations, and the ownership of processes and outcomes of forest governance, market linkages, and incentives as mechanisms to encourage collective action. Further, the different approaches of managing community-based forest resources have been constrained by power imbalances among higher level and local level authorities and the lack of mechanisms for equitable benefit sharing from forests. Inadequate consideration of Sustainability 2022, 14, 1478. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031478 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability