The world’s most biodiverse and carbon-heavy forests grow where land ownership is ill-defined, and people are poor. Development agencies have long supported titling land to alleviate rural poverty; now many such projects are justified to slow deforestation. Research on smallholder land titling in public forests of Ecuador and Peru reveals that despite appealing calls for pro-forest, pro-poor titling, there are critical trade-offs between granting landowners unencumbered rights vs. rights constrained to favor forest conservation. In this talk, Naughton will discuss policy options and how land tenure underpins multilateral forest conservation initiatives.