Page 30 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

Chapter 1
1.1.2. Adaptation and Mitigation strategies in the forest-climate nexus
The relationship between forests and climate change, or the forest-climate nexus, is intricate because it is biophysical, social and at the same time political (Bodegom et al., 2009; Mansourian et al., 2009). On the biophysical aspects, and as already alluded to, forests play a role in the regulation of climate through physical, chemical and biological processes; they store carbon and can also be a source of emissions to the atmosphere when converted to other land uses (Houghton, 2005; Bonan, 2008; van der Werf et al., 2009). The social dimension of the relationship between forests and climate change dwells on the ‘cause and effect’of the climate problem. Humans are largely responsible for the cause of climate change – with the loss of forest quantity (deforestation) and quality (forest degradation) as one of the drivers of climate change (Miles and Kapos, 2008; Angelsen, 2009). At the same time, humans, including their livelihoods, economies and societies, are confronted with the impacts of climate change, to which they have to adapt. The political relationship between forests and climate change is complex, particularly as it regards issues of discourses, institutional arrangements and governance systems. One way of unpacking this complexity may be through the roles that forests play in climate adaptation and mitigation, and how these roles are allocated policy attention within a country’s political system. This thesis sets to do that in the case of the Congo Basin forests.
Overall, the appreciation of the role that tropical forests play in climate change adaptation and mitigation is well grounded in literature (Dale et al., 2000; Innes and Hackey, 2006; IPCC, 2007; Nyong et al., 2007; Bele et al., 2010; Fisher et al., 2010; Somorin, 2010; Kalame, 2011; Locatelli et al., 2011; Pramova et al., 2012; Chia et al., 2014). Not surprising, the literature is polarised around forests’roles in: (i) reducing societal exposure and vulnerability to climate impacts by improving societal adaptive capacity (adaptation); and (ii) absorbing atmospheric carbon through its biochemical processes or in reducing destruction and degradation of forests as carbon sources (mitigation).
Of interest in this thesis is the set of forest-related activities that constitute adaptation and mitigation strategies. A number of literature reviews have explored forests’roles in climate adaptation (see Spittlehouse and Stewart, 2003; Spittlehouse, 2005; Guariguata et al., 2008; Seppala et al., 2009; Somorin, 2010;
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