Transparency
A lack of good governance and transparency often undermines progress towards conservation and natural resource management in the forests of the Congo Basin.
This in turn leads to corruption, poor business practices and a lack of incentive to implement long-term, sustainable improvements to natural resource management problems.
This situation has its roots in the region’s colonial past. Economic structures privileged foreign investment and extractive industry, and little was done to build local governance institutions and the capacity of citizens to participate effectively in policy making. The division of African territories seriously disrupted traditional governance, land use, trade networks and population movements. In urban areas, European-style rule-of-law was introduced, with civil rights and recourse through civil courts. But in rural areas, villagers lived under a different form of administrative rule, in which colonial authorities typically recognized customary or tribal authorities, often hand-chosen by colonial powers. Foreign domination of the logging sector means that forest use decisions still tend to reflect foreign economic concerns, rather than local or national development interests, which is a prerequisite for sustainable forest management. Natural resource management systems, particularly for wildlife, must take into account traditional systems and bolster them against factors such as open access and the “tragedy of the commons” which can result from poorly designed policies and lack of law enforcement.