This essay identifies, summarizes, and analyzes leading international and national laws and judicial cases recognizing or otherwise supportive of native/aboriginal title.
In recent decades there has been a shift away from government control of forest land towards increasing access and ownership for indigenous groups, communities, individuals, and firms. This brief highlights this transition in statutory forest tenure from 2002-2008 in Asia. The brief focuses on forest land tenure, but tenure over other forest resources (timber, non-timber forest products, carbon, sub-soil mineral ores, etc.) is often just as important. Moreover, although the focus is only on tenure in this analysis, the regulatory framework is also critically important because it specifies the rules regarding land use and who gets access to what resources.
This report measures whether governments have continued to reduce their legal ownership and control of the world’s forests from 2002 – 2008, and assesses the implications of forest tenure change for forest peoples, governments, and the global community.
The questions of who owns the forests, who claims them, who has access to them and further, who should own them, are hotly contested in many forest regions of the world.