While every family in a village had a right to use the forest, rules for forest use were decided by a village council with representation from families having decision-making authority by virtue of land ownership, land use rights or taxpaying obligations. Rules were designed to:
limit the quantity of forest products that a family in the village could remove from the forest;
provide equal access for every family in the village, while preventing over exploitation of the forest by the village as a whole;
require as little effort as possible to implement and enforce;
accommodate the roles that each forest product had in the village economy;
fit with details of the local environment;