Page 53 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

General Introduction and Research Setting
research sites (community forests). A total of 120 randomly-selected households
were surveyed on their socio-economic characteristics and local adaptation 1 practices. A local research assistant was hired to help with local language
translation during the data collection. This method of data collection was only
used for one of the five empirical chapters. Collected data were statistically
analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test for differences between
the three community forests. Reference is made to the methodology section of
Chapter 4 for more detailed information.
Participation in policy events: Towards designing official policies on adaptation and REDD+ in the Congo Basin, many of the countries and organizations organized a number of policy-oriented events, including: workshops, symposia, open and closed dialogues, and science-policy dialogues. I participated in more than 30 of these meetings over the research period in my capacity as CIFOR staff. In principle, this data collection method - participatory observation, had a unique value for understanding political and policy processes beyond formal rules and procedures. From the experience of this thesis, it offered enormous opportunities to understand of cognitive elements shaping the discourses on adaptation and REDD+ strategies. The method was also useful in revealing ‘allies and axis’among different policy actors and how different ideas or perspectives on the type of institutions needed or‘what should be done’were more accentuated than others.
Literature and document review: As a method of data collection, a number of content analysis of published and unpublished documents produced by different actors within the region, was undertaken. A few output reports of some of the relevant policy events on adaptation and mitigation were particularly useful. On forests, national and regional policy documents, legal agreements and policy proposals were reviewed and analyzed. On climate, National Communications to the UNFCCC, National Adaptation Programme of Actions (NAPAs), Readiness Project Idea Notes (R-PINs) and Readiness Project Proposals (R-PPs) were also accessed and analyzed. Given that a number of demonstration projects on REDD+ and adaptation started during the research period, their project documents were also analyzed to get a grasp on balancing policy and practice.
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