title: Titling indigenous communities protects forests in the Peruvian Amazon.
abstract: Developing countries are increasingly decentralizing forest governance by granting indigenous groups and other local communities formal legal title to land. However, the effects of titling on forest cover are unclear. Rigorous analyses of titling campaigns are rare, and related theoretical and empirical research suggests that they could either stem or spur forest damage. We analyze such a campaign in the Peruvian Amazon, where more than 1,200 indigenous communities comprising some 11 million ha have been titled since the mid-1970s. We use community-level longitudinal data derived from high-resolution satellite images to estimate the effect of titling between 2002 and 2005 on contemporaneous forest clearing and disturbance. Our results indicate that titling reduces clearing by more than three-quarters and forest disturbance by roughly two-thirds in a 2-y window spanning the year title is awarded and the year afterward. These results suggest that awarding formal land titles to local communities can advance forest conservation.
authors.affiliation: Resources for the Future, Washington, DC 20036; blackman@rff.org.|Climate Change and Sustainable Development Sector, InterAmerican Development Bank, Washington, DC 20577.
authors.forename: Allen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Blackman
authors.affiliation: Office of Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness, Strategy Development Division, InterAmerican Development Bank, Washington, DC 20577.
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Corral
authors.affiliation: Climate Change and Sustainable Development Sector, Environment, Rural Development, and Disaster Risk Management Division, InterAmerican Development Bank, San Isidro, Lima 27, Peru.
authors.forename: Eirivelthon Santos
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Lima
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA 94305.
authors.forename: Gregory P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Asner
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D065928:Forests; D006801:Humans; D010067:Ownership; D010568:Peru; D044382:Population Groups
keywords: REDD; decentralization; deforestation; degradation; tenure reform