Tenure reforms in indigenous lands: decentralized forest management or illegalism?

Abstract

Granting indigenous people legal land titles has emerged as an intervention to implement decentralized governance. Tenure reforms, however, may not avoid land expropriation and degradation without supporting institutions that enforce exclusion rights. Focusing on land expropriation in the Andean-Amazonian region, this review looks at enabling conditions and challenges for aligning tenure reforms with other interventions (i.e. environmental licensing and activism) to enforce indigenous rights and improve land security. Although a pro-rights rhetoric is enshrined in tenure reforms, they may be seen as a ‘tolerated illegalism of rights’ that allow for different kinds of mutually advantageous interplay between governments, transnational corporations and financial organizations. Yet, some contestations by indigenous groups supported by local and global activism have helped to successfully guarantee tenure security.