During the Oslo Governance Forum (OGF) which took place 3-5 October, the UNDP Democratic Governance Group and UNDP Oslo Governance Centre convened close to 250 governance practitioners and experts from government, civil society and academia from around the world to discuss how governance assessments can be a tool in achieving social accountability.

Participants at the Oslo Governance Forum, which gathered close to 250 practitioners, policy experts and leaders representing government, civil society, academia and international organizations. Credits: Ashish Singh

The UN-REDD Programme initiated the first two Participatory Governance Assessments (PGA) pilots in May this year and was interested to learn from similar governance initiatives with a longer track record. As such, one of the main sessions of the OGF targeted governance work within REDD+ and Natural Resource Management to feed into the work of the PGA pilots by focusing on challenges and risk faced by different governance initiatives and lessons learned. In addition, possible links between some of the initiatives were explored throughout the sessions focusing on country experience, methods, tools and approaches.

The different presentations within this REDD+ session, ranging from the extractive industries, water and forest governance made it clear that a lot of the same challenges are recurring, such as the need for stronger inter-ministerial coordination, improved access to information and anti-corruption efforts.   The first two PGA pilots – Indonesia and Nigeria – were presented and discussed during this track. In addition, a range of useful and relevant governance tools and training manuals such as the WRI’s “Governance Forest Indicators Toolkit” and Stockholm International Water Institute’s “Training on Water Integrity” were presented and discussed, and will be considered for future utilization in the PGA pilots.

Possible synergies between the PGA pilots and the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT)/ Voluntary Partnership Agreements will also be explored further where the two initiatives are being implemented in the same countries. Although the objectives are not identical, some of the same local communities are relevant for the two initiatives, as well as many of the same issues and challenges will be addressed.  In Vietnam, such a linkage will be explored shortly during the preparatory work leading up to the implementation of the PGA pilot there.

In light of the objective of this track, the OGF was indeed a success as it provided an arena to present and discuss the PGAs for REDD+ with a larger audience, as well as allowed sharing of lessons learned from similar governance initiatives.

A report from the OGF will be available shortly on the UN-REDD Programme workspace. Meanwhile, more background information and individual presentations are available here.