For millennia, small farming communities across the tropics have quietly governed their own relationship with the forest through something older and more supple than any written law: the unspoken agreement between neighbors about how much help one can ask for. A sweeping analysis of more than 18,000 forest patches now confirms what indigenous practice has long embodied — that swidden agriculture, when shaped by community social norms rather than top-down regulation, sustains forest regeneration and may even deepen biodiversity. The finding invites policymakers to reckon with a humbling possibi