Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy Working Paper

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 examines how interventions intended to improve functionality and productivity of forested landscapes to improve livelihoods of the poorest populations, might actually yield co-benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation. It argues in favour of a ‘landscape’ approach to achieve these co-benefits.

This paper documents insights and lessons about using markets and incentives to strengthen forest landscapes and livelihoods. It aims to interrogate just what a ‘landscape approach’ means in economic terms, to identify how markets can be used to generate incentives to share forest benefits more equitably and sustainably, and to highlight which kinds of approaches and ‘packages’ of interventions can assist in this.