In the environment development arena, trees and forests slipped from centre stage in the early 2000s, overtaken by apparently more immediate concerns water, food, industrial pollution and climate change. Now they are revalued in terms of carbon and constructed as precious sinks to be protected and fostered through schemes such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Policy and funding flows emphasize large-scale, government-controlled schemes and carbon markets. The tree tenure literature, and the argument that tree tenure was necessary to provide incentives to plant and protect trees, in turn, helped to inform legal and policy arguments that farmers and local communities should have rights and control over trees, at a time when such rights were vested only in state forest departments.