Rewarding the upland poor for saving the commons? Evidence from Southeast Asia

The Southeast Asian uplands provide livelihood opportunities for more than 100 million people. Many of these are poor smallholder farmers who are economically, socially and politically marginalised, suffer from tenure insecurity and have few options other than drawing on the uplands' natural resources to sustain their living. Forest conversion, inappropriate land use practices and timber logging by a variety of actors have caused widespread resource degradation problems, such as deforestation, decline of biodiversity, erosion, water pollution, and fooding of downstream areas (often..