The role of aid agencies within environmental cooperation in Congo Basin: facilitators or policy entrepreneurs?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Environmental cooperation in the Congo Basin region is facing a paradox as the region has an inflow of aid but deforestation and poverty continue to grow. We examine the role of aid agencies in this paradox, who we assume are policy entrepreneurs who influence and benefit from the process. To test these assumptions, we use policy entrepreneurship theory coupled with a comparative qualitative approach to conduct two case studies. The first case study is a climate change adaptation capacity building initiative with the German aid agency GIZ in the central role. We prove that GIZ led the project with high effectiveness, benefit from it but failed to align the initiative’s goals with the local needs. The second case study is the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), which functions without an aid agency in the central role. We observe that although the CBFP’s actions strongly matched local needs, it lacked some effectiveness and could not yield relevant policy outcomes. Therefore, we suggest that suboptimal institutions meeting a minimum standard in both management and orientation toward local needs should be built.