Land Tenure and Tropical Forest Carbon Management

SummaryThis essay introduces five papers investigating land tenure issues related to conserving tropical forests via incentive-based strategies (e.g., PES, REDD+). After briefly reviewing key terms and concepts, we point to important contributions from the papers regarding (a) a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationship between land tenure and forest outcomes, and (b) policy lessons from early efforts to address tenure in sites targeted for forest carbon projects.