Resources for the Future, Washington, DC 20036;
Climate Change and Sustainable Development Sector, InterAmerican Development Bank, Washington, DC 20577.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Apr 18;114(16):4123-4128. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1603290114. Epub 2017 Apr 3.
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.
发展中国家越来越多地通过赋予土著群体和其他地方社区对土地的正式法律所有权来实现森林治理权力下放。然而，所有权对森林覆盖的影响尚不清楚。对所有权运动的严格分析很少，相关的理论和经验研究表明，它们可能会阻止或刺激森林破坏。我们分析了秘鲁亚马孙地区的一场此类运动，自 20 世纪 70 年代中期以来，已有超过 1200 个土著社区获得了约 1100 万公顷的土地所有权。我们利用源自高分辨率卫星图像的社区层面纵向数据，来估计 2002 年至 2005 年间授予土地所有权对同期森林砍伐和干扰的影响。研究结果表明，在授予土地所有权的那一年及之后的一年的 2 年窗口期内，所有权使砍伐减少了四分之三以上，森林干扰减少了大约三分之二。这些结果表明，将正式土地所有权授予地方社区可以促进森林保护。
