Page 62 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

national safeguard standards) to structure actors’ participation in the REDD+ governance process (institutional arrangements). The interest of policy actors to design and implement REDD+ in Cameroon is largely due to: (i) commitment to reduce deforestation; and (ii) aim to access the multiple opportunities (e.g. poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and economic development) that REDD+ promises to deliver.
Chapter 6 explores the institutional interactions between adaptation and REDD+ policies in Cameroon. It analyzes the strategies of policy actors in building synergetic outcomes, to the extent that the priority of adaptation interacts with the opportunity of REDD+, and vice versa. Importantly, the chapter studies the deliberate efforts by policy practitioners to improve the interactions between the two. It theoretically combines the concepts of policy integration, institutional interaction and interaction management to analyze the interactions and/or integration between adaptation and REDD+ in Cameroon. On institutional interaction, the chapter reports that both adaptation and REDD+ actors employ a broad range of cognitive elements, including ideas, knowledge, expertise and information to foster synergy (cognitive interaction). More so, capacity development initiatives crucial for REDD+ implementation increasingly integrate adaptation concerns through climate-smart technologies to reduce climate vulnerability. A prominent means of managing these interactions include the establishment of a national climate change observatory (ONACC) as an overarching institutional framework to provide operational guidelines for policy implementation. Beyond adaptation and REDD+, Cameroon’s interest is to integrate other environmental issues such as biodiversity conservation, pollution and desertification control along with poverty reduction into economic and development policies and planning. In this context, interaction management entails conscious and deliberate efforts by policy actors to maximize synergies. On the motivation for synergy, the chapter reports that REDD+ policy actors are willing to integrate critical elements of adaptation in the design of national strategies for as far as this might contribute to successful implementation. In the same way, synergy is seen as an opportunity to elevate REDD+’s adaptation profile by allocating much priority to non-carbon values, such as social safeguards, poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation.
Summary
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