The morning fog blanketed the plateau region in SW Cameroon. Photo by Mokhamad Edliadi/CIFOR-ICRAF

Cameroon is a rainforest-rich country, with about 46% of its land area covered in tropical forest, representing a massive carbon sink with enormous potential to mitigate climate change. It’s also home to a vast range of biodiversity — from the world’s biggest frog to the critically endangered Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli). 

Yet that forest is quickly disappearing: the country has one of the highest deforestation rates in the Congo Basin, averaging 1.1% per year between 2000 and 2015, with slash-and-burn agriculture, mining and development at the top of the list of deforestation drivers. Given these dynamics, the country was considered a promising candidate for introducing deforestation-focused climate mitigation incentives.

When the UN-backed REDD+ programme to reduce forest emissions and enhance forest carbon stocks began in the middle of the 2000s, the country was quickly onboard, and a national REDD+ programme was set up under the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection, and Sustainable Development (MINEPDED).  

“Over a decade later, however, the programme still had considerable room for improvement”, said University of Leeds researcher Josiane Kakeu. Misalignment among different ministries meant permits for other land uses, such as mining and physical infrastructure, continued to overlap with forest conservation lands/landscapes efforts. “Quite frankly, for REDD+ to achieve its stated aim, it has to be integrated into the land use departments that drive deforestation,” said Kakeu.

Through her PhD research, Kakeu sought to investigate how the international instrument of REDD+ might be more effectively integrated at a national level, using the Cameroonian context as a case study. In a recently published paper in Environmental Policy and Governance, she and her colleagues shared some of the findings from this work. 

They found out that REDD+ processes in Cameroon are primarily governed under ‘horizontal’ arrangements, which are led by the environment and forestry departments, both of which chair a REDD+ Steering Committee bringing together representatives from various land use sectors and relevant institutions.

Under this arrangement, REDD+ benefits from the technical/scientific expertise of the leading ministries. “The leadership of MINEPDED means that REDD+ is in the hands of professionals in the field of climate change, with the responsibility to conduct negotiations on the international stage,” said Kakeu. “With the support of the forestry department, REDD+ can draw on previous initiatives to fight against deforestation.” 

But, horizontal management can be a disadvantage when trying to build bridges for cross-sectoral integration between REDD+ and other land-use sectors — such as agriculture, animal husbandry, mining and infrastructure — because there is no top-down political leverage to dislodge resistance and encourage departments to work together. “MINEPDED occupies the same hierarchical rank as other ministries and can’t pass orders on to them,” said Kakeu. “And that has defeated the integration of REDD+ into other sectors.”

In response, some commentators have proposed reforms under which the office of the Prime Minister would drive REDD+ implementation instead. However, Kakeu emphasized that such a shift would not be a panacea.

“The Prime Minister has high authority to advance the integration of REDD+ in other sectors,” she said, “but at the same time, placing the initiative under the Prime Minister, which is a political institution, would expose it to political uncertainties: when a pro-REDD+ Prime Minister is in office, plenty of progress will be made, but that progress will be set back when a REDD+-skeptic takes over.”

As such, the authors recommend a hybrid of horizontal and vertical organisational arrangements that draws from both strengths. They suggest implementing REDD+ under the leadership of the Prime Minister’s office — but in collaboration with a multi-ministerial team of vice-chairs as a means to shield the process from political vagaries and make the most of different kinds of technical expertise. They also propose the creation of REDD+ units within each relevant land use sector to help “weave REDD+ into their fabric and enhance the integration process,” said Kakeu.

“This work really helped to illustrate the importance of institutional arrangements for REDD+ implementation,” said Denis Sonwa, the director of research, data and impact (RDI) at the World Resources Institute (WRI) Africa and a co-author of the study. “It clarified that it’s not solely a technical activity — it’s also political, and you need to balance the technical activities with the political support. Our long-term vision is for REDD+ to transcend political cycles by being properly integrated into a resilient institutional framework.” 

“More broadly”, said Sonwa, “the study highlights the fact that, as much as possible, we need to be considering how to contextualize the REDD+ process and to re-evaluate current institutional REDD+ arrangements — not only in Cameroon, but also in other countries in the Congo Basin, and across the tropics.”

“Similar research, along with feasibility analyses of our proposed hybrid model and future studies, will enrich the knowledge base on institutional arrangements within various political contexts,” Sonwa continued. “The ultimate goal is to fully embed REDD+ into broader land use planning, supported by a coherent institutional environment that promotes effective, efficient, and inclusive REDD+ initiatives — along with co-benefits such as biodiversity conservation, climate resilience, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”