The authors from Michigan State University (MSU) stress that important factors around local management institutions that are often related to rights devolution processes, such as leadership, rule enforcement and resource monitoring, play a central role in forest outcomes, as do the initial state of the forest and the value of the resource.

The authors stress that rarely are the full bundle of rights to manage and use forests completely transferred to local levels, resulting in partial devolution of rights. They note that local level management can take many forms from individual management of private property, to co-management regimes, to local municipal management and the outcomes of these different processes are rarely compared. The authors identify a series of recommendations for future research that may improve the evidence-base around securing community tenure and biophysical outcomes. [Publication: Increasing Community Rights to Forests: A Solution to Forest Degradation?] [Publication: Empirical Linkages between Devolved Tenure and Forest Condition] [USAID Land Tenure Portal and TGCC Commentary]