Page 57 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

Summary
The impacts of human-induced climate change on economies, societies and the planet has been receiving both scientific and political attention over the last few decades. Within the global climate convention (UNFCCC), adaptation and mitigation are two necessary components of a strategy to tackle climate change. Mitigation comprises all human activities and interventions aimed at reducing emission sources or enhancing the sinks of greenhouse gases. Mitigation actions are expected to delay and reduce damages caused by climate change, thus providing environmental and socio-economic benefits. Adaptation in the context of climate change refers to any adjustment in systems in response to climate change impacts, aimed at moderating harm or exploiting beneficial opportunities. Several authors have argued that despite adaptation and mitigation sharing the common objectives of responding to climate change, differences still exist in their approaches, including spatial scale, relevant sectors, and urgency. Nevertheless, there is a growing recognition that both are intricately linked in certain sectors, especially in forestry. In forestry, mitigation is largely about reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) while adaptation is about using the forests to reduce societal vulnerability to climate risks and harnessing the provisioning and regulating functions of forest to increase adaptive capacity. Many forest activities such as sustainable forest management, afforestation and forest conservation have been reported to constitute the main strategies of adaptation and REDD+.
The Congo Basin forest, a transboundary pool of natural resources across six countries in central Africa (Central African Republic, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of Congo), is at the centre of discourses on adaptation and REDD+ as policy responses to climate change. The deliberations among the mix of policy actors involved in the policy processes are focusing on contextualizing global discourses on adaptation and REDD+ on the one hand, and on designing institutional and management structures for policy implementation on the other hand. Governing adaptation and REDD+ in the Congo Basin presents a number of challenges for both scientists and policy practitioners. These challenges include: (i) competing discourses on institutional arrangements and policymaking on adaptation and mitigation; (ii) the low governance capacity of existing instruments for timber