(b) Distribution of benefitsThere exists a substantial discourse on common property management, in which a community tends to beviewed as a harmonious and co-operative group of people. Originally, community forestry projects werelaunched along with the revival of the indigenous forestmanagement system, which was pointed to as an effectively functioning community-based management system.In the ethos of the time, traditional communities weretreated as something special, and thus they were romanticised as being better managers of local resources.This romanticised idea of traditional indigenous communities resulted from using concepts of static andover-simplified social relations (Cleaver 2000). Thenarrative of traditional systems claimed to find conservation values in all traditional resource use systems withoutdetailed analysis of their management systems.