CNH: Environmental Governance, Forests, and Logging Concessions: The Effects of Institutional Complexity on Forest Systems, Cover, and Change in Central Africa

刚果盆地拥有亚马逊盆地以外一些最有价值和最受威胁的热带雨林。本研究项目将分析和解释环境治理机制的变化如何影响刚果盆地喀麦隆和刚果共和国两个国家的伐木和森林覆盖变化。一个多学科的调查小组将寻求两个主要问题的答案：(1)国家政府、伐木公司和第三方（非政府组织、捐助者、当地行动者）之间合作关系的变化如何影响特许协议的内容、与伐木特许相关的实践和环境结果？(2)武装冲突、贸易和货币价值的变化、对采伐行为、森林覆盖变化和相关结果的监测和信息的增加如何改变新的和不断发展的治理安排的微观和宏观影响？在回答这些问题时，研究人员将把重点放在解开形成森林覆盖和森林变化的许多相互交织和多层次的因果过程上。这些因素包括宏观经济变化、武装冲突、法外活动以及政府机构、伐木公司、非政府组织、国际捐助者和当地用户等行为主体的行为。为了识别和理解复杂的非线性过程，研究人员将采用数学、统计和基于主体的建模技术，通过这些过程，数百个参与者的微观选择决定了总体结果。他们预计，他们的研究和教育活动将导致一系列研讨会，包括一个关于治理和伐木的最终研讨会，几篇关于治理、伐木和森林覆盖之间关系的科学论文，两本关于“刚果盆地的伐木”和“环境治理和基于主体的模型”的综合卷，以及近20名研究生在高级定量方法和建模技术方面的培训。该研究项目意义重大，因为它将解释治理形式的变化如何影响一个世界地区的伐木和森林覆盖结果，该地区在生物多样性保护、热带森林覆盖和碳封存方面极其重要，但研究仍很不足。这项研究将在三个方面为未来的科学进步做出贡献。它将收集并公开提供关于喀麦隆和刚果共和国伐木特许权的综合数据库。这个数据库将帮助其他研究人员调查治理安排、伐木特许权和特许经营者的特点、地方和国际非政府组织以及通过民间社会伙伴关系提供的新融资形式如何影响森林覆盖和变化。该项目将在学术研究人员、非政府组织专业人员和政府官员之间建立跨越传统部门的伙伴关系，以促进在政策背景、捐助者资助战略和不断变化的治理安排中采用有用的发现。因此，它将为科学发现创造更广泛的公众受众和用途。最后，该项目将支持培训20多名美国和非洲学生进行实地研究，分析数据，并采用先进的计算和建模技术，从而为刚果盆地的科学研究建立更大的能力。该项目得到了美国国家科学基金会关于自然和人类系统耦合动力学竞赛的奖励。

The Congo Basin possesses some of the most valuable and threatened rainforests outside the Amazon Basin. This research project will analyze and explain how changing environmental governance mechanisms have affected logging and forest-cover change in two countries in the Congo Basin, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. A multidisciplinary team of investigators will seek answers to two main questions: (1) How do variations in partnerships among country governments, logging companies, and third parties (NGOs, donors, local actors) affect the content of concession agreements, and practices and environmental outcomes related to logging concessions? (2) How do armed conflict, shifts in trade and currency values, and increased monitoring of and information on logging practices, forest-cover change, and associated outcomes modify the micro- and macro-level impacts of new and evolving governance arrangements? In answering these questions, the researchers will focus on disentangling the many intertwined and multi-level causal processes that shape forest cover and forest change. These include macroeconomic changes, armed conflict, extra-legal activities, and behaviors of actors such as government agencies, logging companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international donors, and local users. To identify and understand the complex, nonlinear processes through which micro-level choices of hundreds of actors shape aggregate outcomes, the investigators will deploy mathematical, statistical, and agent-based modeling techniques. They anticipate that their research and educational activities will lead to a series of workshops, including a capstone final workshop on governance and logging, several scientific papers on the relationship between governance, logging and forest cover, two synthesis volumes on "Logging in the Congo Basin" and "Environmental Governance and Agent Based Models," and the training of nearly 20 graduate students in advanced quantitative methods and modeling techniques.The research project is significant because it will explain how changes in forms of governance affect logging and forest cover outcomes in a world region that is extremely important in relation to biodiversity conservation, tropical forest cover, and carbon sequestration, but which has remained quite understudied. The research will contribute to future scientific advancement in three ways. It will assemble and make publicly available a consolidated data repository on logging concessions in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. This data repository will help other researchers investigate how governance arrangements, the characteristics of logging concessions and concessionaires, local and international NGOs, and new forms of financing through civil society partnerships influence forest cover and change. The project will build partnerships across conventional divisions among academic researchers, NGO professional, and government officials to facilitate the adoption of useful findings in policy contexts, donor funding strategies, and changing governance arrangements. It will thereby create a broader public audience and use for scientific findings. Finally, the project will support the training of more than twenty U.S. and African students to conduct field research, analyze data, and deploy advanced computational and modeling techniques and thereby build greater capacity for scientific research in the Congo Basin. This project is supported by an award resulting from the NSF competition focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.