Date: October 3, 2008
Conservation organizations are becoming increasinglyaware of the need to deal equitably with localpeoples’ rights to forest land and forest resources. “Rights-based” approaches to conservation arebeing widely promoted.1 In many situations these“Rights-based Approaches” are evolving alongsidemajor forest governance reform initiatives.These two trends might be expected to seek similargoals – greater equity and certainty over who canuse forests and for what purpose. The reality is thatthe processes of governance and rights reform arerevealing underlying tensions between the needsto husband the local values of forests versus theneed to conserve the so-called public goods valuesthat accrue to society at large. Reconciling thetrade-offs between local and public goods valueswill be a major challenge for resource managers incoming decades.