The Voluntary Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests constitute an international reference document for the development and improvement of national and subnational guidelines for the sustainable management of natural tropical forests. They also provide a reference on technical issues at the macro (landscape) and micro (forest management unit) scales. They set out seven principles of sustainable forest management and a total of 60 guidelines withn these principlesa, as well as implementation actions for each guideline based on best practices and existing tools.