CHALLENGE
Burkina Faso is a Sahelian savannah country which has experienced continued degradation of its natural resources including forests. Poor governance is seen as an important contributing factor to this degradation. Burkina Faso is also one of eight pilot countries selected by the Forest Investment Program (FIP) for investments that would address the underlying causes for deforestation and improve forest carbon sequestration. This program could result in significant investment activities totaling USD 30-35 million, however poor forest governance, corruption and lack of transparency could be a serious bottleneck to the implementation of the FIP. An early identification of the risks posed by weak governance could ecourage steps toward policy reforms, strengthening implementation capacity.

APPROACH
This PROFOR-financed activity aimed to apply a forest governance diagnostic tool to construct a baseline assessment of the forest governance situation in Burkina Faso and to pinpoint the areas requiring highest priority reforms. A forest governance reform strategy for the country would then be formulated on the basis of this assessment.

A second objective of this work was to support the production of a field manual to facilitate the application of forest governance diagnostics in any country interested in improving the quality of forest governance. The field manual would draw upon the lessons learned from the application of the diagnostics in Uganda (through a separate PROFOR activity) and in Burkina, as well as applications of the governance assessment framework by other agencies (for example, in Kenya by Indufor and in Russia by the Federal Forest Agency, with support from the World Bank and DFID).

RESULTS

• A background country assessment report, finalized in February 2011 (“Rapport de base sur la Gouvernance Forestière au Burkina Faso,” in French).
• A customized questionnaire (in French), finalized in October 2011.
• A multistakeholder workshop was held on October 12, 2011. The workshop report ("The Quality of Forest Governance in Burkina Faso: A first analysis of strengths and weaknesses") is available in a bilingual French and English file on this page.
• A User's Guide for a Forest Governance Diagnostic Tool was also produced to guide other countries in assessing and monitoring forest governance.