Improving access to forest resources : experiences in informal tenure reform from IUCN’s Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy

It is commonly claimed that forest tenure reform that provides rural people with rights to access and use of forest resources can contribute to improved forest management and poverty alleviation. But, at least with respect to poverty alleviation, there are few experiences with formal forest tenure reform that have demonstrated this to date. Given how difficult it is to achieve pro-poor tenure reform, an important question is whether modest informal changes can achieve results. This paper argues that, in advance of full-scale tenure reform involving legislated changes to tenure laws, more modest locally negotiated changes and local ‘informal’ arrangements can lead to improved access to forests and provide people with the confidence that enables them to invest time and resources in forest management in the short and medium term. The modest informal changes can act as useful ‘policy experiments’ to support more formal change. This paper argues that secure tenure is not always a sufficient condition and is not always a necessary condition for enabling better management that benefits people. This paper examines experiences from the Forest Conservation Programme of IUCN, particularly the Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy (LLS).