Carbon trading in community-based forest management: A bibliometric mapping of scientific publications from 2000 to 2025

Carbon trading in community-based forest management (CBFM) has emerged as a promising mechanism for simultaneously addressing climate change mitigation and improving the welfare of rural communities. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of 203 scientific publications obtained from Scopus, covering the period 2000 to 2025, with an analytical focus on the period 2010 - 2024. Using VOSviewer v.1.6.20 and Scopus's built-in analysis, this study analyzes publication trends, author participation patterns, geographic distribution, journal sources, and thematic structure through author collaboration, co-occurrence of keywords, and bibliographic linking networks. Results show a sharp acceleration in publication growth following key climate policy milestones, including the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (2013), the Paris Agreement (2015), and COP26 (2021), with a record 21 articles published in 2024. Nepal and Indonesia emerged as dominant knowledge producers, collectively contributing 42.4% of total publications. Thematic mapping identified three main research clusters: carbon governance in CBFM, carbon measurement and quantification, and multifunctional forest landscape ecology. A critical knowledge gap was identified: while the supply side of carbon measurement of forest carbon stocks and biomass has been well documented, the demand side of how communities access, negotiate, and fairly obtain benefits from carbon markets remains largely unexplored. These findings underscore the urgent need for interdisciplinary research that links technical carbon measurement with institutional, economic, and social dimensions of equity to promote fair and scalable carbon trading within the framework of community forest governance.