Two main types of strategies — mitigation and adaptation — have emerged and are now widely recognized as critical to addressing climate change. While mitigation aims to reduce the sources or to enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases, adaptation addresses the impacts of climate change on societies and ecosystems.

Forestry and agriculture provide a range of opportunities for linking the two strategies, with projects in both sectors playing an important role in mitigation and adaptation (Locatelli et al. 2011). In the forestry sector, for example, afforestation, reforestation and avoided deforestation projects aim to absorb or maintain carbon stock (mitigation). These...

This section presents an overview of national processes within the UNFCCC framework, as well as broad international initiatives supporting most of the adaptation and mitigation activities on the ground. UNFCCC framework

In 1992 the UNFCCC was established to tackle the issues of global warming and climate change. It constitutes one of the main frameworks on mitigation and adaptation strategies in each country for defining priorities and funding. Adaptation received attention after the UNFCCC’s Conference of the Parties 7 (COP7) in 2001, with the establishment of three funds mainly dedicated to adaptation (Huq 2002): the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), the...

Adaptation and mitigation actions can only be effective when mainstreamed into actual policies and a broader framework. When analyzing the types of activity implemented in readiness and national programs for REDD+ or adaptation to climate change (Figure 7), it appears that the two are going through similar processes.

The key challenge in climate policy is to build capacity and facilitate action. Hence, considerable effort is deployed to build national and regional capacity in both adaptation and REDD+. Other means of facilitating governments’ efforts to incorporate climate change considerations into planning and policy making include:

creation of new institutions or institutional...

The analysis of adaptation and mitigation projects and initiatives in the Congo Basin reveals some insight into the barriers encountered by national institutions, multilateral and bilateral partners, decision makers and implementers. The emerging landscape of climate change projects is complex with projects at different stages of implementation. Most of the projects are at an early stage with more emphasis on REDD+ than on adaptation due to uncertainties about spatio-temporal patterns of risk occurrence and lack of clear adaptation solutions. Other explanations are linked to insufficient political support or negligence of the issue amongst project managers. Adaptation to climate change is...