Evidence is growing that tenure-secure community forests are associated with avoided deforestation and other ecosystem-service benefits. However, securing community forest tenure also involves costs, including costs to establish supportive legislation, to demarcate and register the lands, to monitor and protect the lands as well as opportunity costs. But what are the costs compared to the benefits of securing and maintaining community forest tenure for community forest areas?
This working paper adresses this question by undertaking a benefit-cost analyses of community forest tenure in Brazil’s Indigenous Territories and Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Although data limitations prevented a full accounting of all costs and benefits, the results of the analyses suggest that:
- in the study areas, the economic benefits of securing community forest tenure outweigh the costs;
- securing community forest tenure is a low-cost, high-benefit investment that benefits communities, countries, and global society;
- investing in strong community forest tenure security can be a cost-effective measure for climate-change mitigation.