The Hidden Layer of Indigenous Land Tenure: Informal Forest Ownership and Its Implications for Forest Use and Conservation in Panama's Largest Collective Territory

SUMMARY A growing body of evidence points to the effectiveness of indigenous territories in reducing tropical deforestation, and global development goals call for increased legal recognition of indigenous land tenure. Yet indigenous land tenure systems are typically complex and multi-layered, and as such remain poorly understood in terms of the pathways through which embedded layers, rules, and norms influence the use and maintenance of forests. This paper illustrates one example of this multi-layered tenure in the case of indigenous communities in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle, a semi-autonomous, shared territory in western Panama. While the comarca holds one formal collective title, research across five communities reveals an informal system of forest ownership that influences how forest resources are managed, and that has implications for longer-term forest conservation efforts. The findings show that indigenous households use and manage a wide range of plant species, but that access to forest resources is u...