Forest and tree-based landscapes represent complex social-ecological systems. In tropical and subtropical regions, these landscapes are home to hundreds of millions of resource-poor people. Gaining a better understanding of how contextual factors influence forest-poverty dynamics is essential for the design, targeting and implementation of effective policy instruments and interventions to alleviate poverty. In this article we present an innovative framework for exploring the social, economic, political, institutional and environmental factors affecting forestry-poverty dynamics. We use two examples of widely used forest management and conservation interventions, namely protected areas and community forestry, to illustrate how these factors can take multiple roles in complex causal chains of processes of social and environmental change in forest and tree-based landscapes. We highlight how future research can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the processes and contexts shaping forest-poverty dynamics, including elucidating the differentiated effects of different drivers of change on multiple social and environmental outcomes over time.