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Despite substantial investments in high-frequency, remote-sensed forest monitoring in the Amazon, early deforestation alerts generated by these systems rarely reach the most directly affected populations in time to deter deforestation. We study a community monitoring program that facilitated transfer of early deforestation alerts from the Global Forest Watch network to indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon and trained and incentivized community members to patrol forests in response to those alerts. The program was randomly assigned to 39 of 76 communities. The results from our analysis suggest that the program reduced tree cover loss, but the estimated effects from the experiment are imprecise: We estimate a reduction of 8.4 ha per community in the first year (95% CI [-19.4, 2.6]) and 3.3 ha in the second year (95% CI: [-13.6, 7.0]) of monitoring. The estimated reductions were largest in communities facing the largest threats. Data from monitoring records and community surveys provide evidence about how the program may affect forest outcomes. Community members perceived that the program's monitors were new authorities with influence over forest management and that the monitors' incentivized patrols were substitutes for traditional, unincentivized citizen patrols that suffer from free riding and inhibit timely community detection of and responses to deforestation. Should our findings be replicated elsewhere, they imply that externally facilitated community-based monitoring protocols that combine remote-sensed early deforestation alerts with training and incentives for monitors could contribute to sustainable forest management., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

Pervasive overuse and degradation of common pool resources (CPRs) is a global concern. To sustainably manage CPRs, effective governance institutions are essential. A large literature has developed to describe the institutional design features employed by communities that successfully manage their CPRs. Yet, these designs remain far from universally adopted. We focus on one prominent institutional design feature, community monitoring, and ask whether nongovernmental organizations or governments can facilitate its adoption and whether adoption of monitoring affects CPR use. To answer these questions, we implemented randomized controlled trials in six countries. The harmonized trials randomly assigned the introduction of community monitoring to 400 communities, with data collection in an additional 347 control communities. Most of the 400 communities adopted regular monitoring practices over the course of a year. In a meta-analysis of the experimental results from the six sites, we find that the community monitoring reduced CPR use and increased user satisfaction and knowledge by modest amounts. Our findings demonstrate that community monitoring can improve CPR management in disparate contexts, even when monitoring is externally initiated rather than homegrown. These findings provide guidance for the design of future programs and policies intended to develop monitoring capabilities in communities. Furthermore, our harmonized, multisite trial provides sustainability science with a new way to study the complexity of socioecological systems and builds generalizable insights about how to improve CPR management., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.