Page 61 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

paid jobs) and forest sectors.The adaptation outcomes of communities are partly influenced by differences in socio-economic characteristics (age, household size, gender, capital assets and education level) and livelihood systems within the population. By focusing on how institutions influence adaptive capacity, the chapter reports that community forestry institutions support adaptation by designing rules to regulate access, structure marketization of valuable forest products, and determine exploitation and management of forest resources. They also contribute to increasing households’ adaptive capacity through non- forest interventions, such as facilitating information sharing, building capacity for new livelihood opportunities and provision of improved crop varieties to households.
Chapter 5 focuses on the debate among policy actors on the design and implementation of a national REDD+ strategy in Cameroon. The chapter provides an overview of the forest context of Cameroon, including the historical forest cover dynamics, the multiple drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, and forest management systems. It analyzes the process of designing a governance structure for a REDD+ strategy in Cameroon that defines the capacities and responsibilities of the different (state and non- state) actors involved, and the institutional structures for their interaction to produce REDD+ outcomes. The chapter reports that although the constellation of actors involved in REDD+ are, to an extent, polarized around different issues and priorities, they are nonetheless increasingly distributing roles and responsibilities among themselves based on their capacities. The state takes the lead in coordination of the policy process and in cooperation with the international community on policy design and implementation. Non-state actors play diverse roles from advocacy, knowledge generation, capacity building, and funding demonstration projects to facilitating information flows from local to global. These actors and their networks have actively contributed to the advancement of the policy process through their knowledge, technical expertise and capacity and financial resources. On the institutions for REDD+ in Cameroon, the chapter reports along two broad categories: existing rules, norms, coordination mechanisms and governance initiatives (e.g. certification schemes, the FLEGT VPA process on illegal logging and forest taxation regime) within the environment and forest sectors that REDD+ can build on (institutional setting); and rule-making processes (e.g. engagement rules and
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