The Bonn Challenge, launched in September 2011 and extended by the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, is an enormous opportunity to improve environmental and social outcomes globally, nationally and sub-nationally. To capture and provide evidence of advances, partnership opportunities, needs and bottlenecks, IUCN initiated the development of the Bonn Challenge Barometer. The results of the application of the Barometer tool will be captured in a series of reports, beginning with the 2017 Spotlight Report (and will be profiled on www.InfoFLR.org). This report describes the process for the development of the Bonn Challenge Barometer and the underlying concepts and initiatives. It includes five case studies of progress on FLR, in Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico (Quintana Roo), Rwanda and the United States.