Governance
Forest Governance and Indigenous Rights
Governance assessment, institutional capacity building, community rights documentation, and participatory land-use planning.
The challenge
Forest Governance and Indigenous Rights
Conservation frameworks fail when they ignore the institutions that actually govern forest use on the ground. Traditional councils and Indigenous institutions shape behaviour whether or not a project recognises them. Governance work that skips this produces plans nobody follows.
How I work
The approach
A field-verified method, not a desk exercise.
01
Assess the institutions
Map formal and customary governance, capacity, and the gaps between them — the method from my Bakossi research.
02
Build capacity
Strengthen partner organisations and document community rights and roles.
03
Plan participatively
Design land-use and conservation plans with local ownership built in.
What you get
Deliverables
Assessment
Capacity assessment
WWF-style institutional and governance assessment of partners.
Rights
Community rights
Documentation of customary rights and institutional roles.
Knowledge
Indigenous integration
Local and Indigenous knowledge built into planning.
Readiness
FLEGT / REDD+
Governance readiness for FLEGT and REDD+.
My published MSc thesis examined constitutionality and bottom-up forest governance in the Bakossi Landscape, and I ran institutional capacity assessments of WWF partners in Campo Ma'an National Park. This is my core research and field record.
Author, Bakossi Landscape governance study; former Conservation Officer, Campo Ma'an