15. Africa

Abstract

African countries are always looking for effectiveness and efficiency of their environmental laws. This, of course, requires not only sufficient financial means but also institutional reforms. It is also reflected in the sincere adherence to the concepts of the commons, harmony with nature, and earth jurisprudence as well as in the broader view of the law—the juridicity—all of them adapted to the African context. The validation workshop on the roadmap for more effective participatory forestry in Central Africa took place on 30–1 May in Brazzaville, Congo. The main objective of the workshop was to review and validate the roadmap for more effective participatory forestry in Central Africa (the Brazzaville roadmap). Fifty participants took part, representing, among others, the Forestry Ministries of the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) countries. The Brazzaville roadmap sets the following eight priorities: ... For each of these priorities, the roadmap defines several actions to be carried out and objectives to be achieved by 2021 and 2025. In this respect, the emphasis is on the effective recognition and exercise of the rights of Indigenous peoples, especially on land and forest resources, the need for entrepreneurship, and the desire for more integrated management, the future of community forests ‘being the subject of a defined regime characterized by a pattern of landscape governance affecting forestry as well as agriculture with a multi-user approach (beyond timber)’ (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rendre la foresterie participative plus efficace en Afrique centrale dans le contexte de l’agenda 2030: La feuille de route de Brazzaville (2018), 20). The Brazzaville roadmap was finally validated with amendments by the workshop participants.