This Special Issue aims to contribute to the emerging science on how to maintain and rehabilitate biodiversity and ecosystem services effectively in the tropics where agricultural expansion has shaped the landscapes. Food production as a provisioning ecosystem service dominates direct economic value and employment in roughly half the world. Its sustainability, or lack thereof, depends on how the trade-offs between human activities and ecosystem services, beyond the provision of food, are balanced and managed locally and globally.

The Special Issue is a result of a research program by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). The program ‘zooms out’ from the details of certification schemes as such, and asks the broader questions of when, where and how certification responses arise to what types of issues, by whom they are initiated and what broader consequences they have.

The complete list of articles is:

1. Environmentally and socially responsible global production and trade of timber and tree crop commodities: certification as a transient issue-attention cycle response to ecological and social issues
   Beria Leimona, Meine van Noordwijk, Dagmar Mithöfer, Paolo Cerutti
2. Certify and shift blame, or resolve issues? Environmentally and socially responsible global trade and production of timber and tree crops
   Dagmar Mithöfer, Meine van Noordwijk, Beria Leimona, Paolo Omar Cerutti
3. Tropical forest-transition landscapes: a portfolio for studying people, tree crops and agro-ecological change in context
   Sonya Dewi, Meine Van Noordwijk, Muhammad Thoha Zulkarnain, Adrian Dwiputra, Glenn Hyman, Ravi Prabhu, Vincent Gitz, Robert Nasi
4. Discourses on the performance gap of agriculture in a green economy: a Q-methodology study in Indonesia
   Sacha Amaruzaman, Beria Leimona, Meine van Noordwijk, Betha Lusiana
5. Unpacking ‘sustainable’ cocoa: do sustainability standards, development projects and policies address producer concerns in Indonesia, Cameroon and Peru?
   Dagmar Mithöfer, James M. Roshetko, Jason A. Donovan, Ewane Nathalie, Valentina Robiglio, Duman Wau, Denis J. Sonwa, Trent Blare
6. Harnessing local strength for sustainable coffee value chains in India and Nicaragua: reevaluating certification to global sustainability standards
   Dagmar Mithöfer, V. Ernesto Méndez, Arshiya Bose, Philippe Vaast
7. Reviewing the impacts of coffee certification programmes on smallholder livelihoods
   Joshua G. Bray, Jeffrey Neilson
8. Making a green rubber stamp: emerging dynamics of natural rubber eco-certification
   Sean F. Kennedy, Beria Leimona, Zhuang-Fang Yi
9. Timber certification as a catalyst for change in forest governance in Cameroon, Indonesia, and Peru
   Sini Savilaakso, Paolo Omar Cerutti, Javier G. Montoya Zumaeta, Ruslandi, Edouard E. Mendoula, Raphael Tsanga
10. Energizing agroforestry: Ilex guayusa as an additional commodity to diversify Amazonian agroforestry systems
    Torsten Krause, Barry Ness