New face for traditional commons forest conversion and the redefinition of common property and individual rights through agroforest development in Sumatra, Indonesia

Forest resources in the tropics have mainly been managed by indigenous communities as common property resources, but it is often acknowledged that these common property regimes presently tend to evolve into more privatized rights as deforestation and monetarization of is also often argued that common property regimes remain consequences on tenure rights and regulations. It is true that the in forest management often leads to a more or less severe deregulation of traditional resource appropriatioñ regimes and forces the evolution of both techniques and regulations governing resource management. However, relating subsistence strategies to common property and commercial strategies to private property is a far too simple dichotomy. “Domestication” and “privatization” dynamics of forest lands and commercial forest resources are far from being linear and universal. Variations and transformations of property systems refer to the variety of new technical choices and of new modes of production. They are also closely related to the evolution of social relationship and perception systems. Whereas the forest is being transformed and private land rights emerge more and more in the forest tropics, some original management systems tend to re-establish forest resources in agricultural lands and to give a new dimension to traditional community rights. Understanding the why’s and how’s of the evolution of these systems can help us redefining the concept of forest commons and common management of forest lands and resources.

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