No abstract

We analyzed the perceptions of resource persons from three stakeholder groups on the benefits, challenges and opportunities offered by joint forest management (JFM) in the Ziro province of Southern Burkina Faso. In other words, a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) approach in combination with an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied. Results reveal that resource persons of the three stakeholder groups perceive the positive aspects of JFM to outweigh the negative aspects. In addition, favorable institutional setup received the highest overall factor score for strength. Inadequate enforcement of the management plans is the weakness with the highest score and the overall priority score for weaknesses was highest for resource persons from the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MESD). On the other hand, better community relations received the highest overall factor for opportunities while uncertainty in decision making at higher levels was perceived as the most important threat to JFM in the Ziro province of Southern Burkina Faso. Therefore, differences in views and addressing realities on the ground requires the participation of all stakeholders in the design, implementation and follow-up of JFM to arrive at a consensus that is capable of delivering the twin challenges of environmental protection and rural development.

Two key international policy processes have been developed to combat illegal logging and promote the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation in developing countries: the European Union's Action Plan on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change policy on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). The implementation of these policies raises concerns about unintended adverse effects on the environment and local peoples' livelihoods. To prevent such effects, both processes involve developing country-level safeguards, so that they 'do no harm'. This paper presents (i) a comparison of the social safeguards of the FLEGT-VPA and REDD+ processes and an explanation of their commonalities and differences, and (ii) an exploration of the potential synergies and the challenges to realizing them. The three main research methods used in the study were semi-structured interviews, content analysis of policy documents, and focus group discussions with local communities and indigenous peoples in south and east Cameroon. Our analysis shows that whereas FLEGT-VPA includes legality-based safeguards with legally binding monitoring and reporting obligations, REDD+ adopts a right-based approach to safeguards. Potential synergies between the two approaches were identified. The synergies lie in the participatory nature of the process of designing benefit sharing mechanisms, strengthening forest and land tenure, and defining the criteria and indicators in FLEGT-VPA and REDD+ safeguards. However, realizing the synergies is challenging, given the existing political economy of Cameroon.