Decentralized natural resource management is now widely implemented across the developing world, however much uncertainty remains over whether such programs really achieve their mulit-faceted aims, and how they should be structured at local levels to be equitable and effective. In the forest sector this increasingly popular paradigm is intended to improve forest conservation, governance and local livelihoods in parallel. While forest outcomes have received greater attention in existing literature there is less empirical support or clarity around how forest sector decentralization effects the equity of governance and livelihood outcomes. This study seeks to understand how greater levels of decentralized community rights and responsibilities under a “pro poor” Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) regime functions to attenuate elite capture, or instead reproduce existing marginalities within communities. To do so I exploit the co-occurrence of CBFM regimes alongside of state forests and state-community co-managed forests. Where these regimes are adjacent provides the opportunity to better understand how a household’s access to CBFM might alter their participation in forest institutions and access to resources shifting the trajectory of outcomes. To do so extensive quantitative and qualitative household survey data are analyzed from 349 households drawn from 12 communities with state or co-managed forests where half of the sample additionally have CBFM processes. Particular attention is paid to whether there is any evidence of positive spillover effects, interactions or trade-offs across governance or livelihood objectives attributable to the presence of CBFM. To connect these separate policy objectives this study draws conclusions as to whether institutions for forest governance may serve as a pathway to changing livelihood benefits, and ways in which pre-existing household wealth status mediate access to both.