Community Conservation and Forest Management in the Peruvian Amazon

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) play a crucial role in conserving tropical forests, yet outcomes of community conservation and forest management (CC-CFM) remain highly uneven. This thesis examines why some IPLCs in the Peruvian Amazon are able to organize effective conservation while others are not. Drawing on comparative case studies and mixed methods, including Qualitative Comparative Analysis, it shows that conservation effectiveness is shaped less by formal land tenure or standardized policy designs than by context-specific interactions among local governance capacities and external conditions. Community enforcement mechanisms, together with clear and legitimate local rules and leadership, emerge as important enabling factors, particularly when embedded in existing institutions and supported through trust-based partnerships and selective government involvement. The research further highlights the role of locally grounded institutions and Communities of Practice in strengthening rule-making, enforcement, and community agency. By challenging dominant one-size-fits-all conservation theories, this thesis advances more adaptive, context-sensitive approaches to forest governance