Moving beyond governance in silos in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Current sectorial approaches to land and resource management in DRC are inadequate to address complex challenges such as poverty alleviation, food security, energy security, loss of biodiversity and climate change particularly in a context distinguished by a lack of, or decline in the regulatory leverage of the state, the growing ‘commodification’ of nature and renewed faith in globalized trade, Multilateral Environmental Agreements and neoliberal capitalism. Critically, there is little capacity to build capacities and an ageing civil service. Recent (renewed) interest in integrated landscape approaches is suggested as one way to manage trade-offs, balance competing demands to achieve sustainable land and resource use and establish viable landscape governance systems.

The presentation asks the question “Can a landscape approach help us move beyond governing in ‘policy silos’?” by comparing and contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of domestically-driven governance reforms, and external governance approaches adopted under i.a. CITES, Forest Stewardship Council, FLEGT, REDD+ and EITI frameworks in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the past fifty years. It concludes with a summarised overview of CIFOR’s strategy to improve governance by building capacity in DRC. The presentation also stresses the importance of historical perspectives in understanding changing patterns of governance as the fortunes of forest conservation science have risen, fallen and recently re-emerged over the past century. 

Dr. Andrew Wardell has over 40 years of experience working on natural resource governance, capacity development and finance issues in more than twenty South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa countries. He is a Principal Scientist with CIFOR’s Value Chains, Finance and Investment team based in Montpellier. Previously he was Research Director of CIFOR’s Forests and Governance Program. Dr. Wardell was formerly a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for World Environment History at the University of Sussex. He is currently co-editing a CUP book CITES as a Tool for Sustainable Development.

Le «Bouillon d'idées» est un séminaire proposé par le groupe de recherche «Développement, Sociétés, Environnements», dans lequel les chercheuses et les chercheurs sont invité·e·s à présenter une recherche en cours.

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