ATTACHMENT 20_ CARPE INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING ANALYSIS, FINAL DRAFT.doc

USAID Central Africa Regional, Central Africa Regional Program for the Ennvrionment (CARPE)

Institutional and Capacity Building Priority Analysis

Contracted under AIDOAA-M-11-00026 Program Cycle Service Center

Contents iiList of Acronyms vExecutive Summary vIntroduction and Approach viSummary of Design Recommendations

1Introduction

1Institutional Development under CARPE I and II and Desired Outcomes

3Approach and Methodology

5Priority Analysis of Selected CARPE Institutions

6Landscape Level Institutional Issues

6Issue 1. Landscapes as Management Units.

9Issue 2. Consolidating Protected Area Systems

12Issue 3. Building incentives for local populations to support conservation of the region’s forests.

15National Level Institutional Issues

15Issue 4. Integrating land use planning and REDD+ preparation

16Issue 5. Increase advocacy at the national level

18Regional Level Institutional Issues

19Issue 6. Increasing regional policy harmonization and civil society contributions for forest health

20Issue 7. Establish Law enforcement capacity and commitment

22Summary Recommendations, Results Framework and Indicators for Capacity Development and Sustainability

22Summary Recommendations

24Results Framework

24Indicators

28References

29List of People Contacted

36Appendix 1. Statement of Work

44Appendix 2. HICD Model Implementation in Context of CARPE

49Annex 3: Summary of Potential Actions for Protected Area Management Consolidation

List of Acronyms

Executive Summary Introduction and Approach

Vast changes have taken place across the Congo Basin since the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) was launched in 1997 and in 2000, designated as the key US mechanism for supporting the initial US commitment to the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP). CARPE is and has been an inspired and ambitious undertaking to protect Central Africa’s dense tropical forests and the biologically diverse resources they harbor. Its vast scale, regional nature and its focus on field activity in isolated settings across numerous non-presence countries underscores its uniqueness among USAID programs. The substantial accomplishment or CARPE’s earlier phases merited approval of a Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS). Two projects are being prepared to support implementation of the RDCS, the Central Africa Forest Ecosystems Conservation Project (CAFEC) and the Environmental Monitoring and Policy Support Project (EMAPS). The new program will expand support to climate change related activities. This institutional analysis is intended to inform the design effort for these two principal activities under CARPE III.

As CARPE III is being designed, the Central African region finds itself on the threshold of a new era of relative political stability, economic growth, expanded foreign direct investment, and substantial development of both rural and urban infrastructure. These changes also magnify threats to the region’s forests just as their role in buffering global climate systems is being recognized and explored. It is a remarkable time to consolidate advances and recommit to the conservation of the vital forest resources that span across much of the ten countries who are members of the Commission of Forests of Central Africa (COMIFAC).

Institutional development and related organizational strengthening efforts will be critical to the success of CARPE III. Earlier assessments and formal evaluations found substantial progress being made by CARPE implementing partners at developing frameworks and management actions geared to land use planning and resource management in the CBFP landscapes. However, these same assessments found the transfer process from NGOs to permanent technical, administrative and civil society institutions across the Central African forests was uneven and insufficient. CARPE support for better information and information management has been substantial and increasingly institutionalized at the regional and national levels. In short, this assessment recognizes the dynamic context in which the region and CARPE are evolving.

Data for the assessment was collected through a series of focus group and key informant interviews in Washington, D.C. and in three CARPE countries. Interview data is complemented with extensive review of documents. The analysis also focuses more on formal institutions, that is, those endorsed by the state(s) as opposed to all others which fall into the category of informal institutions. Informal institutions and organizations would include customary and religious institutions. The latter are of considerable importance to the “sustainable management of biodiverse forests” and entail a host of critical issues related to local governance, gender, indigenous peoples, tenure rights, local markets and the role of religious and other civil society organizations. A full understanding and acknowledgement of informal institutions should be reflected in proposals of potential implementing partners for CARPE III and engagement with informal institution will be a natural element of further landscape work.

Key institutional issues in the analysis address a number of constraints identified in the RDCS and CAFEC and EMAPS concept notes:

Weak technical and organizational capacity, Insufficient incentives for communities to access and manage natural resources, Weak capacity of the judiciary system to enforce existing laws, Lack of reliable and available information for decision making and resource (including carbon) monitoring

Summary of Design Recommendations The institutional analysis points to a number of preferred design recommendations that are briefly summarized from the previous discussion.

To promote institutional sustainability of landscape programs:

1. Updated threats analysis to better limit and prioritize geographic focus within and between landscapes. Minimize funding where other funding sources are able to replace USAID CARPE.

2. Divide landscape implementation into two sub-programs:

a. Consolidating protected area management through better planning and information, improved governance and enforcement, focus on critically threatened resources. If a national program is given priority, the analysis recommends that RoC with its launch of a new protected area agency and innovative co-management arrangement for park management.

b. Integrating participatory land use planning for the forest sector with other sectoral and administrative and territorial management institutions. This complements policy program recommendations regarding overlap of rural concessions and management authority.

3. Continue to develop local organizational and advocacy capacity by redirecting grants management and funds towards mentoring and stronger roles for local NGOs in landscape consortia and to broader outreach and education efforts along the lines of USFS-INCEF awareness raising regarding citizens rights and responsibilities for different land use zones.

4. Increase community participation and motivation by clearly distinguishing between benefit streams that accrue to communities through Community-Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) and those accruing to individuals and households through improved value chains and market integration.

To strengthen CARPE support at the national level:

1. Continue to support improved access to information for decision making by broadening the impact of existing programs such as institutional use of WRI forest atlases, which help frame and resolve resource management conflicts. Also, support improved means of monitoring forest cover change and degradation and linking this information to national carbon accounting and monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV).

2. Expand and reinforce Country Teams by transforming them from a focal point led effort to CARPE supported partnership or linkage between IUCN and COMIFAC national coordinating units, both of which are member based and thus well-positioned to meet institutional sustainability. Differentiate CARPE program monitoring function and the CARPE matrices from national policy/planning functions. Strengthen civil society participation through selected advocacy grants and/or reinvigoration of CEFDHAC networks at the national level.

3. Provide selected support to government institutions such as the planning units of national forestry ministries and protected area agencies.

To reinforce regional harmonization:

1. Direct support to the COMIFAC Secretariat carefully limited to not duplicate other donor efforts and to insure that COMIFAC becomes increasingly valued and owned by national member countries. This would complement country level support to national COMIFAC coordinating units and could probably be designed into a single implementing mechanism. Funds permitting provide a regional policy advisor to work with regional issues.

2. Strengthen regional information and training institutions again complementing but not duplicating other funding such as RIFFEAC, ERAIFT, and USFWS Mentor. Support to OSFAC to train in GIS and forest cover analysis and use across country team participant organizations would be one such example.

3. Increase the focus on effective enforcement against wildlife crimes and illegal logging through widespread training of magistrates and other judiciary institutional actors, through strengthened watchdog functions such as an environmental press and independent observers, stronger sanctions and sentences, and through links to international enforcement efforts including those of other USG organizations.

Introduction Institutional Development under CARPE I and II and Desired Outcomes

Vast changes have taken place across the Congo Basin since the Congo Basin since the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) was launched in 1997 and in 2000, designated as the key US mechanism for supporting the initial US commitment to the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP). CARPE is and has been an inspired and ambitious undertaking to protect Central Africa’s dense tropical forests and the biologically diverse resources they harbor. Its vast scale, regional nature and its focus on field activity in isolated settings across numerous non-presence countries underscores its uniqueness among USAID programs. The substantial accomplishment or CARPE’s earlier phases bear testimony to dedication of CARPE stakeholders and merited approval of a Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS). Two projects are being prepared to support implementation of the RDCS, the Central Africa Forest Ecosystems Conservation Project (CAFEC) and the Environmental Monitoring and Policy Support Project (EMAPS). This institutional analysis is intended to inform the design effort for these two principal activities under CARPE III. The CAFEC and EMAPS Project Appraisal Documents (PADs) are being undertaken in an essentially concurrent timeframe.

As CARPE III is being designed, the Central African region finds itself on the threshold of a new era of relative political stability, economic growth, expanded foreign direct investment, and substantial development of both rural and urban infrastructure. These changes also magnify threats to the region’s forests just as their role in buffering global climate systems is being recognized and explored. It is a remarkable time and an opportunity for the US Government, and for USAID specifically, to consolidate advances and recommit to the conservation of the vital forest resources that span across much of the ten countries who are members of the Commission of Forests of Central Africa (COMIFAC).

As we enter Phase III of CARPE, the institutional context is vastly changed in much of the basin. The Republic of Congo, a country of economic collapse and civil war at the outset of CARPE, is now opening its doors to tourism around its prize national parks, a situation made possible in large measure by the steady presence of CARPE’s implementing partners in the remote Northern landscapes where innovative partnerships improve forest management and pave the way for private sector tourism. Cameroon has put forth an ambitious national vision, and three phase program to attain industrialized middle income status by 2035.

The first phase coincides with CARPE III and focuses on economic growth in a context of improved governance. Gabon, which did not even have a national park program at the outset of CARPE CBFP support, is now undertaking a bold effort to lead CARPE international NGOs while expanding its own capacity with support from CARPE’s government partners, USAID, USFWS and USFS. The Democratic Republic of Congo suspended its forest concessions and reallocated them a revised legal framework, and at the same time is expanding and reforming its protected areas system. Even as the country faces violent rebellion and social disorder in the east, new investment in mining, oil exploration and agriculture underscore the changing dynamic and imperative for rational land use decision-making with regard to climate change and biodiversity.

World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) and other conservation groups identified key threats to the region’s biodiversity with a focus on great apes and forest elephants, and a 2000 meeting lead to the initial selection of priority landscapes (WWF 2003) in which to focus expanded conservation efforts. After a decade of effort, the threats remain nominally the same: wildlife trade and poaching, slash and burn agriculture, mining, poor commercial forest management and others. What is different and critical is that the scope and scale of these threats, in no small measure driven by Asian investment and markets, has and continues to accelerate dramatically. Internationally supported conservation efforts struggle to keep pace, and institutional responses to the challenges will require a combination of consolidating successful strategies and adding new ones.

New geographic areas will come into focus. Inventories of flagship species such as okapi, great apes and elephants, taken by CARPE partners over time across the Basin revealed much that was unknown and unexpected. Discoveries, for example, of large gorilla populations residing in frequently inundated swamp forests in Congo led to strikingly altered estimates of remaining lowland gorilla populations. The discovery underscored the fact that concentrations of important wildlife were sometimes resident outside the protected areas and outside of the 11 original landscapes supported by CBFP-USAID. Although some modification to landscape boundaries has been made and new parks are being created, CARPE III would be well served by a comprehensive reassessment of threats both at the regional and local levels. This process of reassessing change is already underway among implementing partners as well as among other non-consortia NGOs some of whom have provided secondary or indirect support to the current CARPE team. The startup of CARPE III offers an opportunity to address these changing institutional trends and challenges, then as required, reorient program mechanisms, structures and reporting and open the door to creative reconfiguration of partnerships.

CARPE III can envision vast change and considerable success as the program closes out in 2020. Despite improved capacity to manage the tropical forests achieved over the past eight years, substantial management and governance questions will need to be addressed if these vast tropical forests are to be maintained as reservoirs of critical and unique biological diversity and as one of the globe’s largest terrestrial carbon stocks. The institutional context is far more promising than encountered by the CARPE team as it scaled up efforts in 2003. Another eight years of stable growth in Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon will bring them to a point where human resources and financial systems can be expected to be in place for protected areas, for fiscal and regulatory oversight of forest concessions, of expanded rights and security for forest users whose current hold is based almost solely on customary tenure. For this to take place CARPE, CBFP partners and others will need to creatively partner to support the reforms, institutional development, and national will to achieve the broad goals that these nations committed to through COMIFAC. Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo with CARPE support will continue to develop leadership in areas of climate change and mitigation. CARPE, despite limited funds, can play a critical role in catalyzing institutional changes that maintain the humid forest ecosystem’s integrity, precisely because so much groundwork has been laid leading into this phase. CARPE has often operated under the radar and its contributions are not always widely recognized, but its continued base support to NGOs who maintain a stable presence in the CBFP landscapes is appreciated and remains fundamental, even as additional funding sources and sustainable funding mechanisms are being developed. One measure of success will be to see the need for this core support supplanted and phased down in transition to what maybe much longer term or permanent links between forest owners, concessionaires, civil society and government.

Approach and Methodology

Institutional development and related organizational strengthening efforts will be critical to the success of CARPE III. Earlier assessments and formal evaluations found substantial progress being made by CARPE implementing partners at developing frameworks and management actions geared to land use planning and resource management in the CBFP landscapes. However, these also found the transfer process from NGOs to permanent technical, administrative and civil society institutions across the Central African forests was uneven and insufficient. Recognizing the difficulty in working over such a large area with a recent history of conflict, turmoil and poor governance, the recently approved RDCS establishes an additional eight year period for forest management and biodiversity systems to be institutionalized. CARPE support to better information and information management has been substantial and increasingly institutionalized at the regional and national levels. In short this assessment recognizes the dynamic context in which the region and CARPE are evolving.

By taking a point in time snapshot, this institutional analysis is thus intended to inform the design effort for the two principal activities under CARPE III – the CAFEC and EMAPS Projects whose Appraisal Documents (PADs) are being undertaken in an essentially concurrent timeframe. Data for the assessment was collected through a series of focus group and key informant interviews in Washington, D.C. and in three CARPE countries. Interview data is complemented with extensive review of documents.

The assessment was made by a single individual with limited resources and is therefore an exercise in overcoming limitations and employing compromise in geographic and thematic coverage. Through initial desk review prior to the fieldwork, geographic coverage was limited to “the two Congos” and Cameroon. Secondary information on activities in the other current CARPE countries, Gabon, Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea, is included but was not systematically examined. The study opts to cover a breadth of institutional and capacity issues at multiple levels, but this comes at some sacrifice to the depth that any single institution or organization can be analyzed. Policies, for example, which in some cases might occupy a significant role in institutional analyses, are covered only peripherally in this document. Policy issues are indeed important to a successful CARPE III effort; they are covered in a complementary analysis that focuses specifically on the policy and regulatory context relevant to the program.

There is also a good deal of interplay between institutions and organizations. This analysis focuses on institutional development priorities critical to long term institutional sustainability that may be achieved through the CAFEC and EMAPS projects. In so doing, the analysis does identify and assess a number of specific organizations or classes of organizations that require further more detailed organizational analysis. The original intention was for this analysis to more systematically identify such organizations as entry points for further work under USAID’s Human and Institutional Capacity Development (HICD) policy and methodology. This objective was partially accomplished by coordinating the institutional analysis with a concurrent HICD field mission; however, logistical and timing issues limited the real time integration of the two assessments.

Candidate organizations for preliminary HICD analysis were identified as during the preparatory phase for this study. The HCID analyst covered some of these organizations, and joint materials used during the analysis are referenced in Appendix 2. The emphasis on institutional development challenges over specific organizations will help guide further work under or informed by HICD and program implementing partners as the CAFEC and EMAPS project specifics are designed and initiated.

The analysis also focuses more on formal institutions, that is, those endorsed by the state(s) as opposed to all others which fall into the category of informal institutions. Informal institutions and organizations would include customary and religious institutions. The latter are of considerable importance to the “sustainable management of biodiverse forests” and entail a host of critical issues related to local governance, gender, indigenous peoples, tenure rights, local markets and the role of religious and other civil society organizations. A full understanding and acknowledgement of informal institutions should be reflected in proposals of potential implementing partners for CARPE III and engagement with informal institutions will be a natural element of further landscape work. Here, they are de-emphasized solely of practical necessity. Most of the issues are best examined in the field at the interface between local populations and resource users where critical priorities are most prominent and evident. This is especially the case for those landscapes and forest zones where human population pressures are highest as in much of Cameroon and in Eastern DRC. Time and resources did not allow for field visits. A concurrent gender analysis for CARPE III was confronted with the same challenge of time and not being able to get to the field. A separate terms of reference for further analysis was prepared. Ideally, this should be part of an overall social soundness analysis where informal institutions could be more thoroughly examined. Here, we are mostly concerned with identifying the drivers and points of entry that will prepare formal institutions to better articulate and address the growing importance of civil society in managing the challenges of conservation and of climate change. There are also issues of illicit and criminal activity that threaten the ecological integrity of the humid forest ecosystems, but these require further specialized investigation beyond the practical scope of this report.

The report is organized into three principle sections. This introductory section provides an orientation to the institutional approach taken and validates overall the 2011 CARPE evaluation conclusion that progress toward institutionalizing biodiversity conservation can take place on a foundation of accomplishment but will take time and support. The second section presents seven key institutional issues that address a number of constraints identified in the RDCS and CAFEC and EMAPS concept notes:

Weak technical and organizational capacity, Insufficient incentives for communities to access and manage natural resources, Weak capacity of the judiciary system to enforce existing laws, Lack of reliable and available information for decision making and resource (including carbon) monitoring

The analysis follows a pragmatic program oriented structure in the sense that the issues analysis mirrors the RDCS Results Framework intermediate results (IRs). It reflects the structure of prior and anticipated implementing mechanisms. Options to overcome these constraints are presented in a manner that may appear disjointed to an outside reader but hopefully will prove useful to program management and stakeholders. Consistent with this approach, issues are categorized as local, national, or regional levels. Most issues have dimensions at each of these levels. The categorization is determined by at what level CARPE entry points are most likely to result in strengthened institutions that produce sustainable positive development outcomes. It is also important to note that the author of this analysis brings previous evaluation experience to the program some of which has helped guide the preparation of the RDCS and related projects. Accordingly, this analysis intentionally does not reiterate the majority of evaluation findings and recommendations. Instead, the intent is to use these prior documents as a point of departure in a forward looking manner. In addition to the specific program options under each issue in the second section, a third section incorporates these findings into a discussion of related elements of the program results framework and CAFEC and EMAPS project logical frameworks and performance indicators.

Priority Analysis of Selected CARPE Institutions

If, as Douglass C. North asserts, “institutions are the rules of the game and organizations are the players,” then changing development outcomes implies changing the rules. For North, “Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction. They are made up of formal constraints (rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (norms of behavior, conventions, and self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics. Together they define the incentive structure of societies.”

In this view, organizations as “players” evolve according to the opportunities offered by the overarching institutional framework. If, for example, corruption is rewarded then corrupt organizations will come into existence and flourish. The distinction between organizations and institutions is not generally as clear as that drawn by North, and nowhere is the overlap more evident than the guidance for this assessment.

In the context of this analysis, “institution” is defined “as an entity (or group or related entities) having a legal framework, an organizational structure, operating systems, staff, and resources and constituted to fulfill a set of related functions valued by a client or constituent group. To fulfill these functions, an institution incorporates, fosters, and protects normative relationships, rules, and action patterns. To the extent that an organization succeeds over time in demonstrating the value of its functions and has them accepted by others as important and significant, the organization acquires the status of an institution.

In a sense CARPE evaluation findings have found that CARPE’s approach of working somewhat under the radar has allowed the program managers to develop organizations that it believes respond to program goals and anticipated outcomes. These CARPE organizations include program constructs such as landscape consortia and country teams as well as specific organizations in the region such as the Observatoire Satellital des Forêts d'Afrique Centrale (OSFAC). The challenge ahead is, following the guidance, to more fully integrate these initiatives into the region’s formal institutional context where CARPE partners have engaged a variety of government institutions in forestry and related sectors. Successful reform of the structures governing land use in the forest zone will require both institutional development and a change in the belief systems that motivate behavior of both individuals and organizations.

In this section the intent is to identify critical priority areas of institutional capacity development, and key institutions/organizations that CARPE should target during its third phase, and to recommend approaches and activities that CARPE Phase III could undertake to engage, develop and strengthen the capacity of regional, national and local institutions and scale up their impact and reach in achieving CARPE objectives and results.

Landscape Level Institutional Issues

One of the institutional challenges confronting CARPE III design is the magnitude, both spatially and in terms of stakeholders, inherent to the CBFP landscapes.

Successful institutionalization of CARPE’s contributions to forest conservation in individual landscapes does not imply that full areal coverage of the landscapes with detailed macro and micro zone plans and implementation programs for each possible management unit needs to be in place by 2020. Nor should it necessarily mean that CARPE III should decrease the number of landscapes covered. The final evaluation of Phase IIb, in fact, suggests that important landscape scale biodiversity assets were not fully covered by CBFP’s initial selection of 11 priority landscapes in the lowland basin. As the information base has expanded since the 2000 meeting that set these priorities, if anything, CARPE III should seek to expand, but not necessarily fund, the inclusion of additional landscapes by CBFP-COMIFAC for the period ahead. An institutional approach eventually needs to cover all assets across the entirety of the forest ecosystem. For example, WWF, who is generally recognized as a principal organizational driver behind the priority setting exercise, identifies eight priority landscapes in Central Africa of which only five fall into the CBFP-COMIFAC priority landscapes. As specific landscape areas attain a degree of maturity and institutional development, the role of CARPE core support and funding will decrease.

CARPE’s adoption of land use planning (LUP) and associated tools as a core landscape strategy was discussed in some detail in the CARPE IIb evaluation. CARPE reports results against this standard, but outside of CARPE it is not clearly understood that LUP will have already gone through a participatory consultative process to develop plans and that this process often results in considerable implementation of field-based resource management activities before a plan is in place and counted. While land use planning as a conservation strategy across the forests remains ambitious and challenging, COMIFAC and national governments have demonstrated some interest and willingness to adopt and incorporate LUP principles.

CARPE III faces several questions or relevance to institutionalization and sustainability:

· Can REDD+ and land use planning strategies be effectively integrated and, if so, what role should CBFP landscapes play in this process?

· In consolidating protected areas systems and PA management, how critical is implementing LUP against other challenges?

· Can widespread implementation of LUP create an institutional framework and enabling context that builds sufficient incentives for local communities to willingly participate and adequately share in the benefits of implementation of macro and micro level plans developed under the approach?

Issue 1. Landscapes as Management Units.

The first CARPE III landscape level issue reexamines the landscape as a conceptual approach for biodiversity conservation versus its use as a management unit or construct for institutionalization between now and 2020. The analysis recommends shifting from promotion of landscapes as management units to a two-pronged strategy that integrates the conceptual validity of the landscape approach, but distinguishes two parallel tracks towards institutionalization: 1) consolidating protected area management, and 2) integrating CARPE led forest landscape land use planning with other territorial planning efforts such as those in agriculture, mining, REDD+, infrastructure and administration, and others.

Institutionalizing landscapes is not the same as institutionalizing the landscape approach. Landscapes as adopted by CBFP and COMIFAC represent large buffering perimeters, somewhat arbitrarily drawn, around high value biodiversity “assets.” Their single aim has been to support an approach to conservation that regards protection and protected areas alone as an insufficient strategy to safeguard biodiversity. The landscape concept builds from protected areas to integrate wildlife focused strategies such as corridors and buffer zones (including well-managed forest concessions with building local support and participation.

Each of the landscapes leads has developed and adopted landscape thinking into their organization’s strategies. WWF’s Green Heart of Africa aims to partner to expand impact in sustainably managed priory landscapes.

African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has developed through its efforts in the Congo Basin and elsewhere what it calls a heartland approach which in the Maringa-Lapori-Wamba landscape uses land use planning strategies building out from a program engendered core national Lomako-Yokakala Faunal Reserve to preserve the tropical forest ecosystem. CI and WCS retain a more wildlife and natural habitat focus but still employ a larger landscape orientation to conservation implementation. For example, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Living Landscape approach is more narrowly focused on key species as means of organizing and prioritizing actions to protect all biodiversity in a wider landscape, so although closer to a classic protected approach, WCS uses threats analysis to reduce conflict both inside and beyond protected area boundaries.

From a biodiversity conservation standpoint, the large landscape concept remains a useful means establishing manageable areas within an overall recognition for the need to integrate or “mainstream” the conservation of the earth’s biological diversity across all human endeavors. As an approach, landscapes do not require strict geographic boundaries, nor do they generally coincide with state administrative units. Individual landscapes are interlinked with one another and require flexibility in program development. CARPE landscapes as drawn are considered by many as too large to effectively manage as “units.”

Implementing partners employ the landscape concept flexibly with regard to geographic units to meet specific program concerns, i.e. “The Northern Congo Landscape” that incorporates parts of three CBFP landscapes: Tri-National Dja-Odzala-Minkebe (TRIDOM), Lac Tele-Lac Tumba, and Tri-National Sangha (TNS), yet depending on the activity or management objective (tourism circuit, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification), using the Northern Congo area as a unit is at times most appropriate. In contrast, for sustainable conservation finance or enforcement, then CARPE’s existing transboundary landscapes provide a more appropriate institutional framework.

Participatory approaches clarify rights and responsibilities over certain resources as a means to access sufficient benefits through activities that are compatible with positive conservation outcomes. Convening stakeholders as part of the landscape process makes local participation, for lack of better word, local. Convening local civil society to support conservation is, according to Terese Hart , best achieved by identifying the specific communities and their representatives at a sub-landscape level and in geographic proximity to a specific tangible threat. From a practical standpoint stressing the limitations to large scale full landscape coverage, WWF noted that their entire CARPE landscape budget could be used just to circumnavigate the Salonga landscape a few times in a year. Institutional mechanisms such as the COCOSI in DRC function more as a forum for implementing partners than as vehicle to enhance local participation. This is the case for individual protected areas as much for overall landscape management where similar national level institutions (CoCoCongo) have come into being. Local participation is discussed separately as a specific issue.

Some landscape considerations:

· Landscape boundaries are not fixed, not consistent with administrative boundaries, and are not drawn to take into account other land uses (i.e. agriculture, mining) than forestry/biodiversity.

· REDD+ planning and zoning will not by any necessity be bound by landscape boundaries, although they may use landscapes as sites for field activities.

· Institutionalizing land use planning approaches necessarily involves integration with multiple sectors and multiple levels of territorial administration at levels that have not yet been achieved. Other ministries do not recognize nor utilize landscape boundaries but do generally recognize (to the extent that they focus on the forestry sector) CARPE macrozones such as protected areas and forest concessions. Through World Resources Institute (WRI) Forest Atlases, inter-ministerial committees on forest zoning and other means, CARPE has laid the groundwork for involvement in developing more comprehensive commitment to forest conservation by non-forest sector institutions.

· Participatory approaches clarify rights and responsibilities over certain resources as a means to access sufficient benefits through activities that are compatible with positive conservation outcomes. The principles captured in the USFS guidelines and CARPE macro and micro zoning efforts remain valid and useful tools, and with adjustment (more focus on empowerment and CBNRM) appear to be on a path toward validation and adoption at the national and regional levels\

· CARPE management used “hard” or mappable landscape boundaries partly as a means to establish reporting figures such as for areas under improved management. An alternative to this method of spatial aggregation should be developed for CARPE III reporting.

Design Options The institutional analysis proposes that for the PAD and CARPE III implementation:

· Landscapes as land units are retained only in support of RDCS IR2, “biodiversity threats in targeted landscapes mitigated.” Given the vast areas incorporated into the current landscapes, the analysis might rather suggest an IR wording “targeted biodiversity threats in CBFP landscapes mitigated.” If the program is forced to define its scope under budget limitations, then the importance of the threat and the likelihood of actually mitigating the threat can serve as a filter to help target limited resources and suggest where institutional work needs to take place.

· CBFP landscapes for IR1, “targeted forest landscapes sustainably managed,” cover some 70% of the humid forest. This is an entirely sufficient footprint to encompass CAFEC SL pilot sites and provide locations where carbon-related MRV is an issue, but the overall REDD+ strategy and its adoption or incorporation of CARPE methodologies should not be bound by landscape boundaries. Landscape boundaries not lend themselves well to administrative management, intersectoral planning and harmonization with other land planning functions. Of central concern to both CAFEC and EMAPS, institutionalization of REDD+ including allocation of carbon rights or carbon concessions is part of a national process and is not confined to CARPE boundaries. This is further discussed as a national level issue. Achievement of land use planning and field-based REDD+ results beyond current landscapes should occur over a longer time period as CARPE III progresses. Such impact will be linked to strategic development partnerships with other funding organizations (UN-REDD, World Bank, African Development Bank) and be fostered by CARPE implementing partners’ relationships with these other funders. Issues related to forestry and other concessions are covered in the policy analysis.

· In short for CAFEC, IR 1 and 2 are pertinent and achievable, and with modification a landscape based program merits continued support. Activities that reinforce these components need greater selectivity of macrozones so activities are clearly and closely tied to the IRs. An approach to field implementation based on maintaining landscape consortia with leaders at least for the first years of CARPE III is valid where resources are sufficient for CARPE to cover essential recurring program costs. Were a triage of landscapes necessary, then some such as those in Gabon and possibly Northern Congo could rely on other USG funding. Remote areas with less progress to date such as Salonga or Monte Alen could be considered.

· As field activities scale to national and regional levels two divergent paths to institutionalization become more apparent: 1) consolidating protected areas and protected area systems; 2) developing, under both EMAPS and in terms of local rights and influence, wall to wall national and basin wide coverage zoning for carbon accounting, MRV, and equitable systems for allocating carbon-related PES, if and when they materialize.

Issue 2. Consolidating Protected Area Systems Some implementers have made the argument that CARPE should focus more narrowly on protected areas systems; however, not only is this insufficient as a biodiversity conservation strategy, it would contribute only very modestly toward forest management for carbon and climate change. That said protected areas remain critical to the overall program goal, and despite progress require further institutional support. Protected Areas (PAs) systems and individual PAs have shown uneven but substantial advance over the past decade, with CARPE being a key driver. The analysis finds that CARPE retains a comparative advantage in working at the specific protected area level either with individual PAs or with closely associated groups such as occurs in transboundary settings. Implementing partners report that CARPE core support to provide the foundation for further program activities funded through matching or alternative funding sources. Without this support, some programs would close down. CARPE has been instrumental in assisting in the identification of new areas for protection, in supporting monitoring and measurement techniques for inventory of forest wildlife, in supporting development of ranger-based monitoring systems, in training ecoguards and other PA personnel, and in a range of management and business planning. While much of this support has been through NGO partners, responsible government management authorities have benefitted substantially but do not perceive or report this support as being USG based. If CARPE is to institutionalize these contributions on a forward basis, then this broader challenge of institutional and human capacity development of protected area agencies and ministries needs to be addressed. Protected area management authorities are all, either directly or indirectly under the Forestry ministries, which is CARPE’s formal ministry of contact.

Despite these advances PA systems and individual PA management is still at a relatively early stage in most landscapes and COMIFAC member states. After 15 years of essentially non-functional PA authority from government partners, the next 8 years are timely for the scaling up of CARPE site experience into system principles that Protected Areas system authorities can increasingly take on to achieve such core functions as: establishing basic administrative systems; developing management and business plans; carrying out ongoing research and monitoring; achieving meaningful law enforcement; putting into place outreach programs that links parks and buffer zone development; integration of parks management with other land management functions at the local, national and regional levels.

Protected area definition and protected areas systems are dynamic and continue to evolve; at this point DRC does not have even a full count of its protected areas , Gabon after slow start has current momentum and government support, ROC appears to be on the cusp of finally launching an autonomous PA Agency. Cameroon has substantial staff, but the system remains directly within the forestry ministry. USAID CARPE does not need to take on the principal support role for all protected area authorities as other donors are also supporting PA organizations. USFWS, with CARPE funds, has altered the CARPE model in Gabon where it is supporting the Gabon, Agence National des Parcs Nationaux, (ANPN) who will, in turn, continue to sub-contract work to CARPE landscape partners including WCS and WWF for work in landscapes. USFWS will support training of ANPN and enforcement brigade staffs to further institutionalize the modified landscape program. The institutional analysis suggests CARPE continue its support role to PA management primarily through conservation NGOs in specific landscapes and protected areas, but that these park/PA specific activities be integrated with the reinforcement of common standards in national programs and at the COMIFAC/RAPAC (or Réseau des Aires Protégées d'Afrique Centrale) level. Protected area systems in each COMIFAC country would benefit from general institutional support. Other donor funding such as GIZ, the EU and its ECOFAC program, Congo Basin Ecosystem Conservation Support Programme (PACEBCo) and others provide direct support to some national programs, and USFWS has taken the lead in working with the Gabon program at both the national and at the landscape/PA level. If CARPE has available resources to more comprehensively support a single protected area organization, then the proposed ACGAP in Congo represents the preferred candidate. Additionally, the Virunga Landscape is as close as any to landscape that CARPE could move toward phasing out at least of its core funding. Some support to consolidate the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, perhaps with direct funding rather than indirectly through CARPE partners AWF and WWF would complement successful institutionalization of park management, tourism development and community participation. The 2005 CARPE evaluation found that CARPE landscape partners, particularly WCS, were able to scale back activities during times of turmoil so that they were poised to roll out a full program as conditions would permit. The relatively advanced status of the Ituri landscape is attributable to this quality; this principle could also be used to shepherd limited resources without completing closing down programs in times or turmoil and conflict.

Tools and analytical approaches…