This Responsive Forest Governance Initiative Handbook defines basic democratic concepts and explains how democratic governance works. It then lays out responsive forest governance principles to be used when working with local government, parallelorganizations, and citizens. Finally, the handbook provides two assessment tools, the Preliminary Institutional Landscape Assessment and the Local Environmental Governance Assessment. This handbook is aimed at a general audience of practitioners, policy makers, activists, and students. It is designed to be used as a basic text in policy maker workshops and practitioner training courses and to guide policy and project assessments in the field. Policymakers and practitioners with more experience will be able to use this as a policy and project design tool and to guide implementation in project sites