This article compares and contrasts communal and individual properties to examine the relationship between state efforts to formalize property rights and tenure security. The article draws on a study of four landscape mosaics in the Peruvian and Ecuadoran Amazon, selected to represent dynamic forest frontiers. Though Hernando de Soto and other theorists from the property rights school emphasize private individual behavior and land allocation in many collective communities, this research also found collective behavior and land allocation in many individualized communities. The importance of the collective and social relations for both types of properties was particularly salient in the sources of tenure security identified. Though title was one important source, this was insufficient, and often formalization was found to be impermanent. Both groups also emphasized social networks and community relations, on the one hand, and demonstrated use, which further establishes the legitimacy of claims with neighbors, on the other.

From 2016–2019, the West African Forest-Farm Interface (WAFFI) project engaged with smallholder farmers in northern Ghana to explore mechanisms to improve the influence of under-represented peoples, particularly women, in decision-making processes and platforms that affect their access to natural resources. Through a multi-phase process of participatory activities, including auto-appraisal, participatory action research (PAR) and facilitated knowledge exchange, villagers and researchers worked together to document and develop a better understanding of the challenges and changes facing women and men in the region to generate social learning. Among these challenges, the degradation of forest resources due to over exploitation, weak governance and conflict of use over shea trees (Vitellaria paradoxa) were particularly important for women. The WAFFI approach created a scaffold for social learning that strengthened the capacity of local stakeholders to share their perspectives and opinions more effectively in multi-stakeholder forums and dialogue related to resource use and land use change initiatives.

(2014). Forest and tree product value chains. Forests, Trees and Livelihoods: Vol. 23, Forest and Tree Product Value Chains, pp. 1-5.

Natural forest regrowth is critical for restoring ecosystem services in degraded landscapes and providing forest resources. Those who control tenure and access rights to these secondary forest areas determine who benefits from economically charged off-farm opportunities such as finance for forest restoration, selling carbon credits, and receiving payment for ecosystem services. We explore multiple dimensions of secondary forest governance in Peru, where the lack of official government statistics of the extent, geography, and ownership, coupled with low state capacity, prevents the development of governance structures that could stimulate their sustainable management. In this paper, we review the challenges to secondary forest governance, and the opportunities to strengthen it, focusing on beneficial outcomes for smallholder farmers. We characterize secondary forest types, extent, and persistence in Peru, followed by a presentation of the social dimensions of their governance. We identify four entry points for government to take action: national mapping of the socio-geography of second growth forest, regularize the property rights of untitled landholders, relax forest regulations, and provide incentives, not sanctions, for secondary forest management. Overall, we recommend folding secondary forest governance into a landscape approach. In Peru, strengthening local forest governance could help to drive benefits of climate change mitigation incentives directly to local forest stewards.