Good for the Poor, Good for the Forest? Formalizing Smallholder Land Rights in the Amazon

media release: Join the Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment for this week’s Weston Roundtable lecture, Room 1163

Speaker:  Lisa Naughton, professor of geography, UW–Madison

The world’s most biodiverse and carbon-heavy forests grow where land ownership is ill-defined, and people are poor. Development agencies have long supported titling land to alleviate rural poverty; now many such projects are justified to slow deforestation. Research on smallholder land titling in public forests of Ecuador and Peru reveals that despite appealing calls for pro-forest, pro-poor titling, there are critical trade-offs between granting landowners unencumbered rights vs. rights constrained to favor forest conservation. In this talk, Naughton will discuss policy options and how land tenure underpins multilateral forest conservation initiatives.

The Weston Roundtable is made possible by a generous donation from Roy F. Weston, a highly accomplished UW-Madison alumnus. Designed to promote a robust understanding of sustainability science, engineering, and policy, these interactive lectures are co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Office of Sustainability.