Forest governance in the Amazon: Favoring the emergence of local management systems

Amazonian communities can greatly benefit from the forest resources they hold by setting up community-governed management systems that reflect their interests and capacities. But, to tap this potential, communities face three major challenges: to develop the systems, to enforce them, and to have their systems acknowledged by the wider society. To better understand under which circumstances communities succeed in mastering these three challenges, this study carried out in-depth research of four communities in the Bolivian, Brazilian, and Peruvian Amazon that demonstrated promising governance systems for the management of their natural resources. Our analysis revealed that the studied communities started to develop regulatory systems when attempting to restrict access by external players to resources of local value. In circumstances of conflicts with external players, such as logging companies, commercial fishermen, or cattle ranchers, the communities became organized to enforce their systems. Where the communities’ representative organizations formed alliances with more powerful partners who could assist them, such as environmental organizations, they had their systems acknowledged. These findings suggest that autonomous relationships with external players (in contrast to dependent paternalistic relationships) can support communities’ development.