Symphorien Ongolo

• PhD - Political Science
• Researcher at Institute of Research for Development IRD - France

Forest communities around the world are increasingly connected to defend territorial and community rights over lands and forests. This is how the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) was created in 1995 by the Government of Canada, aiming at bringing together a diverse association of individuals and groups towards a common vision of sustainabl...

The expansion of conservation territories has become an important symbol for measuring the success of biodiversity conservation policies. However, overreliance on symbolic actions risks distorting policy decisions, overstating achievements while hiding inefficiencies. To ensure fair and sustainable conservation efforts, it is essential to criticall...

This book takes a multidisciplinary perspective to analyze and discuss the various opportunities and challenges of restoring tree and forest cover to address regional and global environmental challenges that threaten human well-being and compromise sustainable development. It examines forest restoration commitments, policies and programs, and their...

The rise of Global China or the rapid expansion of Chinese influence abroad has had a commensurate impact on transnational trade and related commercial pressure in the governance of natural resources in Africa. Rosewood with its direct link to China’s cultural renaissance has had a boost in extractivism in tropical regions. Taking inspiration from...

The international initiative to combat deforestation and forest degradation, known as REDD+, was put on the DRC agenda following actors' policy discourse aimed at convincing policy‐makers of its effectiveness. This paper uses discursive institutionalism (DI) as a theoretical and analytical framework to analyse a set of selected policy documents on...

Tshopo is one of the first provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to be selected, in 2011, for the implementation of Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects. Since then, this province offers the opportunity to analyze the implementation of deforestation reduction initiatives in order to understand...

HIGHLIGHTS • Forest governance reforms in DRC have been dominated by the interests of powerful actors, such as the World Bank and political elites. • The most powerful international actors use incentives/disincentives and information to consolidate their influence. • Powerful international actors have exacerbated the crisis of forest governance in...

The promotion of good governance in the forestry sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was one of the major components of the policy reforms initiated by international organisations in the mid-1980s. This paper analyses concepts of 'good governance' in the forestry sector in the DRC between the mid-1980s and 2020 and highlights the recen...

The growing global interest in biodiversity conservation and the role of forestland sustainability in climate change mitigation has led to the emergence of a new specific field of global environmental governance that we called ‘forest diplomacy’. With the largest tropical forest area after the Amazon, Congo Basin countries (CBc) constitute a major...

What drives discrepancies and inconsistencies in global forest statistics? The use of global statistics has influenced academic research and sectoral policies of forest ecosystems since the first global forest assessment was conducted in 1948 or even earlier. Very little work has been done to provide a comprehensive analysis of the governance struc...

This article's originality and major contribution lies in its empirical roots. Based on the case study of the European Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (VPA-FLEGT) in Cameroon, the paper questions what happens when global forest governance reforms meet domestic politics in Africa. Coupled with a carefu...

Since the end of 2000s, many forest-rich countries have engaged into results-based deforestation reduction monitoring under REDD+ mechanisms. A set of methods and tools designed at international level is expected to be transferred to the domestic level in many developing countries, in order to generate information on how these countries contribute...

Since the 1990s, forest-dependent communities in tropical regions have created national and transnational grassroots networks. While in Latin America, their main goal is to promote community forestry and claim territorial rights, forest-dependent communities in the Congo Basin are more focused on improving participatory inclusion in forest policies...

Since the end of 2000s, many forest-rich countries have engaged into results-based deforestation reduction monitoring under REDD+ mechanisms. A set of methods and tools designed at international level is expected to be transferred to the domestic level in many developing countries, in order to generate information on how these countries contribute...

The consequence of state controlled forestry in Cameroon has been the overexploitation of forest resources often in conflict with local forest dependent communities and state conservation objectives. The failure of state controlled forestry to achieve sustainable forest management has led to the emergence of new network like arrangements amongst wh...

This study aims to understand, through the example of Cameroon, why industrial logging companies adopt or avoid sustainable certification or labelling systems of their forest operations in the Congo Basin region. From a methodological standpoint, the research is based on a sample of three empirical case studies of logging companies operating in Cam...

With about 107 million hectares of moist forest, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a perfect paradox of a natural resources endowed country caught in repeated economic and socio-political crises. Democratic Republic of Congo possesses about 60% of the Congo basin’s forest on which the majority of its people rely for their survival. Even if...

With about 107 million hectares of moist forest, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a perfect paradox of a natural resources endowed country caught in repeated economic and socio-political crises. Democratic Republic of Congo possesses about 60% of the Congo basin's forest on which the majority of its people rely for their survival. Even if...

While forests’ contribution to rural livelihoods has been unearthed scientifically, the patterns, determinants and forest conservation policy implications of livelihood diversification still beg for more scientific and policy edification. This paper makes a contribution in this regard, using household data (N = 200) from eight villages around the K...

Tropical countries are often blamed for not managing their natural resources sustainably. But what if overexploitation is inherent in political structures and policies—rooted in foreign colonial order—and is consistently detrimental in the contemporary use of forestlands? This article argues that post-colonial land development policies and related...

Du fait de leur multifonctionnalité, les forêts tropicales constituent un objet d’étude privilégié pour analyser les politiques environnementales à l’échelle locale et globale. Qu’elles soient considérées comme richesses nationales, bien public mondial ou ressources communautaires, elles sont au cœur des débats environnementaux portés sur la scène...

Certification standard bodies in climate governance are assumed to function as independent third parties agencies in transactions, providing trust and transparency to ensure that the calculation of carbon credits is reliable. This article investigates the validity of this assumption for the voluntary forest carbon market by analysing the environmen...

The stakes are high for tropical forestlands in multi-actor power relations because of their interdependence (climate change mitigation), their above- and below-ground resources (wood, mines) and their arable lands. In tropical countries, where the State owns most of the forestlands, many governments feel that any external initiative to change thei...

Governance of tropical forests at both the international and the national level is more and more fragmented because of the large constellation of actors, ideas and interests influencing forestland policies for their conservation or change. In public policy area, fragmentation is to some extent the result of competing interests and objectives that l...

Depuis les années 1980, les pays en développement ont régulièrement été sous pression d'un agenda de réformes de leurs politiques publiques, pensées, voire imposées, par les acteurs extérieurs à l'exemple des institutions financières internationales. Dans le secteur environnemental, les pays tropicaux sont notamment exhortés à internaliser une doct...

Les principales causes de déforestation et de dégradation des forêts du bassin du Congo restent l’agriculture de subsistance sur abattis-brûlis et l’utilisation de la biomasse comme source majeure d’énergie. L’agriculture est responsable d’un taux de déforestation de l’ordre de 1 % par an, auquel s’ajoutent l’exploitation industrielle du bois d’œuv...

The originality of the REDD proposal is its incentives-based mechanism designed to reward the governments of developing countries for their performance in reducing deforestation as measured against a baseline. This mechanism is founded on the hypothesis that developing countries ‘pay’ an opportunity cost to conserve their forests and would prefer o...

La lutte contre les changements climatiques met la question des forets tropicales a un rang tres eleve dans l'agenda des negociations internationales sur l'environnement. L'integration de la deforestation dans la Convention-cadre des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques (CCNUCC) comme source majeure de reduction des emissions de CO2, confi...