ABSTRACT
In many countries, local poverty coincides with natural resources that have a high value in the global marketplace. Natural resource governance could reduce poverty and incentivize sustainable use patterns if the full societal value of these resources were transferred to the rural poor through secure individual or communal tenure and payments for environmental services. Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is a proposed international programme that will create a mechanism to pay developing countries to maintain tropical forest carbon. Unfortunately, because more than 80 per cent of the world’s tropical forests are under government ownership (FAO, 2010), the importance of adding forest carbon to the rural poor’s bundle of tenure rights has not been a priority of many REDD efforts to date. Furthermore, the emphasis on national carbon tenure and national or international level REDD interventions threatens the tenuous natural resource property rights currently held by the rural poor.
