Community forestry (CF) provides valuable lessons for REDD+ benefit-sharing mechanisms (BSMs) for three reasons. First, CF institutions generally have an established BSM that incentivizes forest conservation, which is recognized by national law. Second, CF generates and distributes co-benefits from timber and other forestry products, including ecological services and carbon sequestration. Lastly, CF is a forest management option for the implementation of REDD+.CIFOR’s infobrief compares CF schemes in Nepal and Indonesia for REDD+ implementation and assesses them in terms of their effectiveness, efficiency and equity. The infobrief documents and analyzes institutional arrangements and incentive structures that can be adopted in designing REDD+ BSMs in different contexts: (1) Different approaches to BSMs - that is, based on rights allocation, inputs or performance - must be considered, as each has a specific and complementary role in achieving the effectiveness, efficiency and equity in REDD+ BSMs; (2) To achieve effectiveness and efficiency, structuring shared benefits, such as under an exclusive bundle of rights, can be more effective in changing behavior than, for example, input-based incentives that are not tied to conditions for halting deforestation and degradation, and/or to performance in tree-planting and wood production; And (3) For equity, opportunity costs are an important consideration in deciding how benefits are shared, particularly if land-use competition is high. For example, individual household opportunity costs might differ from the average in an area under REDD+, and so the final valuation should consider trade-offs.http://www.cifor.org/library/5506/thinking-about-redd-benefit-sharing-mechanism-bsm-lessons-from-community-forestry-cf-in-nepal-and-indonesia/To watch previous Science@10 presentations, please go to CIFOR TV https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ1FEAFDHOWcnCwld2Qjio_vqHIExpcwG