The Economic Costs and Benefits of Securing Community Forest Tenure

This working paper analyzes the economic costs and benefits of securing community forestland rights in Brazil and Guatemala, concluding that such investments are low-cost and high-benefit for local communities, nations, and the global society.

• Benefit-cost analyses of community concessions in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve and Brazil’s Indigenous Territories indicate that securing community forest tenure is a high-benefit, low-cost investment. These analyses suggest that such tenure security can serve as a cost-effective strategy for climate-change mitigation relative to other measures.
• While securing community forest tenure provides ecosystem-service benefits, avoided deforestation, and social and economic gains, it also incurs specific costs. These include the costs of establishing supportive legislation, land registration and demarcation, monitoring and protection, and opportunity costs.
• Despite limitations in available data that prevented a comprehensive accounting of all factors, the results indicate that the economic benefits of securing community forest tenure in the studied areas exceed the costs.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). The Economic Costs and Benefits of Securing Community Forest Tenure. https://www.wri.org/research/economic-costs-and-benefits-securing-community-forest-tenure

Chicago

World Resources Institute. The Economic Costs and Benefits of Securing Community Forest Tenure. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/economic-costs-and-benefits-securing-community-forest-tenure.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=The Economic Costs and Benefits of Securing Community Forest Tenure |url=https://www.wri.org/research/economic-costs-and-benefits-securing-community-forest-tenure |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendeconomic, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{The Economic Costs and Benefits of Securing Community Forest Tenure}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/economic-costs-and-benefits-securing-community-forest-tenure}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }