Assessing the Enabling Conditions for Translating Restoration Commitments to Restoration Actions: Case of Cameroon

Abstract

Understanding governance and policy related conditions is relevant to determine what is needed to drive large-scale landscape restoration investments. Using Cameroon as a case study, this paper assessed the enabling conditions for large-scale forest restoration focusing on tree growing as the main practice. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were applied to understand trends in the opinions of 48 stakeholders sampled purposefully, including the review of forestry and land use related strategy and policy documents. Results indicated that stakeholders and strategy documents, strongly recognize the relevance of governance and policy related conditions to drive large-scale restoration. The trends in stakeholder insights revealed that the capacity of these conditions is currently weak and insufficient to enable large-scale restoration and progress towards improving these conditions have been very slow when compared to assessments made more than a decade ago. There is a need for a strong political will to improve these enabling conditions, though the technical arguments required to help guide and drive the political will are weak. The forest landscape restoration strategic framework needs to be revised and reinforced with appropriate and in-depth technical and operational orientations on how to improve each of the enabling conditions that will help achieve the large-scale restoration commitments in Cameroon.