Community Forests (CFs) aim to improve human wellbeing and conservation effectiveness, though their performance remains contested. A recent innovation in protected area (PA) governance is to combine CFs with forest certification. We assess (1) the impact of certified CFs on wellbeing (2) gender inequality and elite capture; (3) interaction effects with neighbouring national PAs. We used a novel approach that integrates field data consisting of locally identified indicators representative of multidimensional wellbeing. We found that CFs positively impacted wellbeing and reduced gender inequality, though did not reduce elite capture. We also detected positive interaction effects between certified CFs and neighbouring national PAs. Our findings suggest that locating contrasting local and national PA governance approaches next to each other may help to maximise wellbeing benefits within complex multi-use landscapes.PhD research project exploring the human wellbeing and conservation impacts of community forests with forest certification in Tanzania

The specific data collection methods are detailed in a previous publication - Loveridge, R., Sallu, S.M., Pesha, I.J. and Marshall, A.R., (2020). Measuring human wellbeing: A protocol for selecting local indicators. Environmental Science & Policy, 114, 461-469. The current data submission relates to the implementation of the above referenced method In brief: 1 - focus groups were used to identify locally relevant wellbeing indicators. 2 - statistical matching was used to select treatment and control villages matched on confounding socio-economic and confounding variables to improve causal attribution of differences 3- the quantitative survey data was collected by a sample of 50 respondents from each of the 19 selected villages using digital tablets. Indicators were grouped into the five domains of wellbeing: material, health, social relations, security, freedom of choice and action with a score for each domain calculated for each respondent.