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.<br>This Special Issue is a result of a research program by CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry. This program ‘zooms out' from the details of certification schemes as such and ask 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.<br>Complete list of articles are:<ol><li><a href="http://www.cifor.org/pid/6973"><b>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</b><br>Beria Leimona, Meine van Noordwijk, Dagmar Mithöfer, Paolo Cerutti</a></li><li><a href="http://www.cifor.org/pid/6353"><b>Certify and shift blame, or resolve issues? Environmentally and socially responsible global trade and production of timber and tree crops</b><br>Dagmar Mithöfer, Meine van Noordwijk, Beria Leimona, Paolo Omar Cerutti</a></li><li><a href="http://www.cifor.org/pid/6632"><b>Tropical forest-transition landscapes: a portfolio for studying people, tree crops and agro-ecological change in context</b><br>Sonya Dewi, Meine Van Noordwijk, Muhammad Thoha Zulkarnain, Adrian Dwiputra, Glenn Hyman, Ravi Prabhu, Vincent Gitz, Robert Nasi</a></li><li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21513732.2017.1331264"><b>Discourses on the performance gap of agriculture in a green economy: a Q-methodology study in Indonesia</b><br>Sacha Amaruzaman, Beria Leimona, Meine van Noordwijk, Betha Lusiana</a></li><li><a href="http://www.cifor.org/pid/6928"><b>Unpacking ‘sustainable' cocoa: do sustainability standards, development projects and policies address producer concerns in Indonesia, Cameroon and Peru?</b><br>Dagmar Mithöfer, James M. Roshetko, Jason A. Donovan, Ewane Nathalie, Valentina Robiglio, Duman Wau, Denis J. Sonwa, Trent Blare</a></li><li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21513732.2018.1460400"><b>Harnessing local strength for sustainable coffee value chains in India and Nicaragua: reevaluating certification to global sustainability standards</b><br>Dagmar Mithöfer, V. Ernesto Méndez, Arshiya Bose, Philippe Vaast</a></li><li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21513732.2017.1316520"><b>Reviewing the impacts of coffee certification programmes on smallholder livelihoods</b><br>Joshua G. Bray, Jeffrey Neilson</a></li><li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21513732.2016.1267664"><b>Making a green rubber stamp: emerging dynamics of natural rubber eco-certification</b><br>Sean F. Kennedy, Beria Leimona, Zhuang-Fang Yi</a></li><li><a href="http://www.cifor.org/pid/6356"><b>Timber certification as a catalyst for change in forest governance in Cameroon, Indonesia, and Peru</b><br>Sini Savilaakso, Paolo Omar Cerutti, Javier G. Montoya Zumaeta, Ruslandi, Edouard E. Mendoula, Raphael Tsanga</a></li><li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21513732.2017.1303646"><b>Energizing agroforestry: Ilex guayusa as an additional commodity to diversify Amazonian agroforestry systems</b><br>Torsten Krause, Barry Ness</a></li></ol>