Tenure alone is not sufficient: monitoring is essential

Many scholars call for the establishment of one kind of formal tenure—government ownership, privatization, or community control—as the way to solve problems associated with high levels of deforestation. This will not work without extensive and consistent monitoring of forest use. In this article, we draw on analyses of time-series remote images, on-the-ground social-ecological surveys of local stakeholders and their forests, and experimental laboratory studies to show that “protected” forests may not be protected in practice when tenure alone is deemed to be the “solution.” When users themselves consider the rules in place to be legitimate, they are frequently willing to engage themselves in monitoring and sanctioning of uses considered illegal, even when related to government-owned property. When users are genuinely engaged in decisions about rules affecting their use, the likelihood of users to follow the rules and monitor others is much greater than when an external authority simply imposes rules. Simple formulas focusing on formal ownership, particularly ones based solely on public ownership of forested lands, will not solve the problems of resource overuse.