Who Owns, Who Conserves and Why It Matters
By Andy White, Augusta Molnar, Arvind Khare - Forest Trends, Forest Trends, Forest Trends View PublicationWhen thinking about forest tenure and conservation, it is important to recall that there are somewhere between 1 and 1.5 billion of the world’s poorest people living in and around forests. Recent studies indicate that about 80 per cent of the extreme poor – those living on less than one dollar a day – depend on forest resources for their livelihoods. As forests are the key assets for these peoples, security of forest resource rights is now recognized as a crucial element in enabling them to achieve their goals of cultural survival as well as social and economic development.