1. Community evaluation of forest and REDD+ governance quality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- Author
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Morgan, Edward A., Bush, Glenn, Mandea, Joseph Zambo, and Maraseni, Tek
- Subjects
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COMMUNITY forests , *ADAPTIVE natural resource management , *COMMUNITIES , *POLITICAL stability , *CAPACITY building - Abstract
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has over 100 million Ha of forest and has significant potential to benefit from these forests, including through REDD+ if they are managed effectively. Effective governance of forest landscapes is essential for environmental management and equitable harnessing of ecosystem service benefits for communities. Poor governance, political instability, and capacity limitations in the DRC are widely highlighted. However, there have been few, if any, attempts to evaluate forest governance in the DRC, especially at the community level. This paper reports a community-level evaluation of forest governance in the DRC, using a survey method. The results suggest that REDD+ projects have the ability to improve forest governance as perceived by the community. The research shows that building the right capacity, consulting and accessing the needs of the community and building long-term projects and partnerships a key success factors. These findings and the novel approach to supporting communities to evaluate their governance are applicable to similar community-level forest governance contexts. • A novel participatory community evaluation of forest governance and its implications for REDD+. • The participatory governance evaluation in the DRC shows REDD+ can improve governance legitimacy. • Governance improvements are linked to capacity building, development activities and long term relationship building. • Ensuring communities are involved in activities, and see benefits is crucial for building governance legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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