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A new tool to support local communities to effectively steward 
their forest resources was released at FLARE’s 2023 fall 
meeting in Kenya. The Community Forestry (CommFor) Tool 
is an app developed to help communities better understand 
and monitor their forests. CommFor leverages research on 
community forestry, one of the most prominent ways in which 
forests are managed globally, together with advances in digital 
technology to capture data for use by local communities in 
forest management. 
The app distills hundreds of questions developed over 
three decades by the International Forestry Resources and 
Institutions (IFRI) research program (now part of FLARE) into a 
much smaller set of questions that can generate new insights 
on community forest attributes, governance, and changes. Led 
by Notre Dame’s Miller together with Indian School of Business 
Professor Ashwini Chhatre, and University of Michigan Professor 
Arun Agrawal, CommFor’s development has included pilot-
testing at dozens of community forest sites in 17 countries. The 
app includes a visualization engine to compare a single forest to 
others like it and allows for the automated download of satellite 
imagery. Future releases will also offer early indications of 
areas of forest management that require attention and a user 
community forum.
Research Empowers Local Communities 
With New Forest Management Tool
25 | 2023-24 Annual Review
On this page: Prof., Fr. Emmanuel Katongole from the Keough 
School pictured with two professor colleagues from Makerere 
University in Kampala, Uganda. The group contributed to the 
development and piloting of the CommFor tool there.
The Pulte Institute for Global Development

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