The community resource management area mechanism: A strategy to manage african forest resources for REDD+

Abstract

Climate change poses a significant threat to Africa, and deforestation rates have increased in recent years. Mitigation initiatives such as REDD+ are widely considered as potentially efficient ways to generate emission reductions (or removals), conserve or sustainably manage forests, and bring benefits to communities, but effective implementationmodels are lacking. This paper presents the case of Ghana's Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) mechanism, an innovative natural resource governance and landscape-level planning tool that authorizes communities to manage their natural resources for economic and livelihood benefits. This paper argues that while the CREMAwas originally developed to facilitate community-basedwildlife management and habitat protection, it offers a promising community-based structure and process for managing African forest resources for REDD+. At a theoretical level, it conforms to the ecological, socio-cultural and economic factors that drive resource-users' decision process and practices. And from a practical mitigation standpoint, the CREMA has the potential to help solve many of the key challenges for REDD+ inAfrica, including definition of boundaries, smallholder aggregation, free prior and informed consent, ensuring permanence, preventing leakage, clarifying land tenure and carbon rights, as well as enabling equitable benefit-sharing arrangements. Ultimately, CREMA's potential as a forestmanagement and climate changemitigation strategy that generates livelihood benefits for smallholder farmers and forest users will depend upon the willingness of African governments to support themechanismand give it full legislative backing, and themotivation of communities to adopt the CREMA and integrate democratic decision-making and planning with their traditional values and natural resource management systems. © 2013 The Authors.