Page 45 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

General Introduction and Research Setting
Agency in this thesis refers to the capacity of individual and collective actors to
change the course of events or the outcome of processes (Pattberg and Stripple, 1 2008). Within the context of environmental governance, agency requires
identifying those actors involved in a decision-making process who actively
shape ideas, norms and values related to a particular environmental issue, and/
or identify environmental problems and possible solutions (Dellas et al., 2011).
Central to the notion of agency is the capacity and competence of policy actors,
from local, national to international levels, to respond to a policy challenge, and
how this capacity may be changing within a given context. Many authors have
highlighted a key attribute that distinguishes agents from actors: in addition
to proposing solutions to environmental problems and implementing them,
agents can shape broader ideas, norms and values relating to environmental
governance (Hall and Biersteker, 2002; Betsill and Bulkeley, 2006; Dellas et al.,
2011).
Another key issue that is emphasized throughout literature is that the ongoing reconfigurations of agency challenge discrete, dichotomous categories, such as ‘‘state’’ and ‘‘non-state’’ and ‘‘public’’ and ‘‘private’’ (Betsill and Bulkeley 2006; Pattberg and Stripple 2008). What is fairly consistent in most of the governance literature is the consensus that configurations of actor-networks are a critical element of environmental governance (Haas, 2007). The increasing number of partnerships between state and non-state, or public and private, actors are essential for the performance of environmental governance to deliver the expected outcomes (in this thesis: of adaptation and mitigation in Congo Basin forests). Arguably, these partnerships hinge on the realization that contemporary society and/or environmental problems are so complex that neither the state, nor the market or civil society can solve the problem alone (Ostrom, 1990; Kooiman, 1993; Lemos and Agrawal, 2006; Visseren-Hamakers, 2009; Schroeder, 2010). In a broad sense, as Tatenhove and Leroy (2003) argue, the shifting dynamics between state and non-state actors within the environmental policy arena are reflective of broader trends within the relationship between the state and society.
On defining the specific roles and responsibilities of policy actors in environmental governance, Schroeder (2010) argues that the activities of policy actors are not limited to participation in decision-making, rather that they actively shape
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