Reddy, Sunita P Clark University When both a state and a local community claim rights over the same resource by appealing to customary or statutory law, territorial conflict may arise. The study will investigate territorial conflict between the state and common property regimes in two Guatemalan pine forests: San Francisco El Alto and San Jose La Arada. The objectives of the proposed study are to determine how territorial conflict between states and communities affects governance of resources, whether variation in customary law is a significant influence on the mode of conflict negotiation utilized and the social and environmental outcomes of conflict negotiation. The extended comparative study will employ in-depth interviews of key informants, semi-structured surveys, participant observation, oral histories and times series analyses of aerial photographs. The result will contribute to further knowledge on the relationships between property regime dynamics and landscape change in tropical forests.
