Page 58 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

exploitation, biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihood systems to deliver adaptation and REDD+ outcomes; (iii) socio-economic contexts of low human capacity, weak institutions and governance systems, high poverty and a low infrastructure base; and (iv) designing adaptation and REDD+ policies/ strategies to maximize their synergetic interactions. The objective of this thesis is therefore twofold. First, it seeks to gain a better understanding of the governance processes of adaptation and REDD+ in terms of the actors involved, the overarching discourses and the existing and emerging institutions. Second, it aims to contribute to scientific analysis of governance of a forest-climate nexus using the case of a region that is relatively less studied in the literature.
Chapter 1 introduces the central theme of the thesis, which is the governance process of adaptation and REDD+ in the Congo Basin region. The chapter presents an overview of the role that tropical forests play in climate change adaptation and mitigation. It presents the context of the Congo Basin forests and the prevailing governance challenges confronting the forests in responding to climate change. The chapter further explains how the concepts of governance, with a specific focus on environmental governance, are relevant for understanding the policy processes of adaptation and REDD+ in the Congo Basin. Discursive institutionalism is introduced as the main theoretical approach to understand the types of actors involved along with their capacity and competence to contribute to the policy processes; the overarching global to local discourses on the issues; and the institutional structures considered relevant for adaptation and REDD+ in the Basin. Four key questions guide the research: 1. What are the dominant frames and discourses on adaptation and mitigation strategies in the Congo Basin, and what implications do these discourses have for policy design (chapter 2)? 2. How are adaptation strategies defined and designed, and what institutional arrangements exist or are being designed by policy actors to shape adaptation outcomes (chapters 3 and 4)? 3. How are mitigation strategies defined and designed, and what institutional arrangements exist or are being designed by policy actors to shape mitigation outcomes (chapter 5)? 4. How do adaptation and mitigation strategies interact? What institutional arrangements or policy frameworks are policy actors developing towards maximizing the synergies (chapter 6)? Finally, the chapter sets out the research methodology, which consists of a mix of different data collection methods such as qualitative (in-depth interview) methods,
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