Good for the Poor, Good for the Forest? Formalizing smallholder land rights in the Peruvian Amazon

media release: Please join UW Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program. The events are free and open to the public.

Room 206 Ingraham Hall - 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706.  

About the presentation: The world’s most biodiverse and carbon-heavy forests grow where land ownership is ill-defined, and people are poor. Last year development agencies redoubled their investments in titling land to alleviate rural poverty and slow deforestation. The EU has pledged to only import commodities grown on titled land. Research in Peru reveals that despite appealing calls for pro-forest, pro-poor titling, there are trade-offs between granting landowners unencumbered rights vs. rights constrained to favor forest conservation. I discuss policy options, including agroforestry concessions, and how land tenure underpins multilateral forest conservation initiatives.

About the presenter: Lisa Naughton is a professor in UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute. She studies the social dimensions of biodiversity conservation, with an emphasis on protected areas and land rights in the tropics. She earned her PhD in wildlife ecology at UF-Gainesville and spent two years at Princeton University’s School of Public Policy and International Affairs. She has long-term study sites in Uganda, Ecuador and Peru and taught in universities in these countries as a Fulbright Fellow. Her research has been funded by NSF, Fulbright-Hays, USAID, the Moore Foundation, and several conservation NGOs. In 2022 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences