The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is currently developing guidelines to assist forest managers to understand, assess and implement climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. To facilitate the development of the guidelines, FAO conducted an online survey of forest stakeholders between May and July 2011. The survey aimed to understand the constraints preventing forest stakeholders from effectively engaging in adaptation and mitigation activities. This working paper presents a summary of the survey results. Climate change was ranked as the least important challenge by the majority of the respondents (90 per cent) when compared to other forest management challenges, such as land use conflicts, governance issues, access to financial resources and lack of information or technical assistance. Overall, respondents highlighted economic challenges as the most important faced by forest managers.