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Paper short abstract:

Community Forestry (CF) in Gabon empowers local communities via Village Associations (VAs) to manage forests sustainably. This research examines, VAs’ governance, barriers like financial constraints, difficulties working with other stakeholders, and successes in participatory governance.

Paper long abstract:

Community Forestry (CF), introduced in Gabonese law in 2001, remains underexplored in practice. It serves as a mechanism for recognizing local communities’ forest management rights, promoting sustainable development, and alleviating poverty. Legally, village associations (VAs) represent communities, granting them customary usage rights over portions of rural forest estates.

This research investigates, using a mixed methods approach, the role of VAs in managing CFs as a strategy for adaptive governance and community empowerment in West Central Africa. Data was collected in collaboration with community mobilizers from a Non-Governmental Organization combating illegal wildlife trafficking, through mixed data collection tools: a series of interviews with VA leaders and a survey for the local communities in 11 villages in Gabon implementing CF systems.

The study examines governance frameworks, internal management systems, and stakeholder relationships to identify barriers to effective local development. Key challenges include financial constraints, leadership conflicts, inequities in stakeholder engagement, and underrepresentation of marginalized groups. However, successes such as women-led cooperatives in NGOUNIE province demonstrate the potential of community-driven projects and sustainable resource management, particularly in initiating income-generating activities.

This research emphasizes the transformative potential of empowering communities to reshape development pathways through participatory governance, ensuring both environmental sustainability and social equity. It also highlights the dual nature of such organizational modes, where modern frameworks often replicate traditional power dynamics, limiting representation for vulnerable groups; in addition to the challenges of negotiating and working directly with larger and better resourced stakeholders, such as private sector companies.