Page 50 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

Chapter 1
institutions between the two (Young, 2002 & 2008). In order to analyse potential synergies, I use the conceptual framework developed by Gehring and Oberthur (2009) to analyse institutional interactions between adaptation and mitigation in the Congo Basin forest sector, and how these interactions can be managed by actors to produce the desired outcomes. The approach of the framework is to understand the manner in which institutions influence each other in most environmental regimes. The conceptual framework examines how institutions may exert causal influence on each other’s development and effectiveness, by exploring causal mechanisms of interactions.
1.4 Research Methodology
This thesis has been undertaken within the framework of two projects of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in the Central African Regional Office in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The two projects were: Congo Basin Forest and Climate Change Adaptation (COFCCA) and the Climate Change and Forests in the Congo Basin Forest: Synergies between Adaptation and Mitigation (COBAM). Both projects were aimed at providing policy actors with a set of analyses, tools and information they need to design and implement policies and projects on adaptation and REDD+ in the region. While COFCCA covered only three countries: Cameroon, CAR and DRC, COBAM covered all of the six countries of the Congo Basin. The author was affiliated with CIFOR (2008-2011) and actively contributed to these two projects. The research context in this thesis involves a nested approach from a regional discourse, national debates on design and implementation to local practices. At regional level, the focus was on three countries: Cameroon, CAR and DRC (for chapter 1). For the rest of the empirical chapters, the focus was on Cameroon with the objective of gaining deeper understanding of national and local dynamics of governance processes of adaptation and REDD+.
1.4.1 Data Collection and Analysis
This sub-section outlines a brief description of the methodological approaches used in this thesis. Complete details on the multiple data sources and data collection methods for each of the empirical chapters (Chapters 2-6) are
30