The Indigenous land titling trap: adaptive practices and the limits of climate governance
研究秘鲁圣马丁省基奇瓦社区的土地确权案例，揭示原住民土地确权改革虽通过适应性策略取得局部进展，却受制于历史遗留的农业、采掘和保护区治理体制，无法改变根本权力关系，从而形成气候治理中的制度陷阱。
This article examines why Indigenous land titling, widely promoted as an enabling condition for climate action, advances without closing persistent gaps in territorial recognition. It conceptualizes this paradox as a climate titling institutional trap , in which reforms progress through adaptive practices yet remain embedded in territorial governance configurations that constrain their transformative potential. Drawing on an extended case study of Kichwa communities in San Martín, Peru, based on multi-scalar ethnographic research, the paper shows how Indigenous leaders and bureaucrats deploy pragmatic strategies to navigate administrative bottlenecks and secure partial advances in titling. However, these gains unfold within historically layered regimes of agrarian, extractive, and conservation governance that overlap and converge in limiting Indigenous territorial rights. The interaction between adaptive practices and these layered institutional orders produces incremental change without altering underlying power relations. The article contributes to development debates by reframing institutional traps as dynamic outcomes of reform processes, highlighting the political-economic conditions shaping the limits of Indigenous inclusion in climate governance.