Governance and Participation in Restoration Systems

Global restoration frameworks, such as the Bonn Challenge and Forest Landscape Restoration, have endorsed multistakeholder engagement in agroforestry as key to reversing land degradation at scale. This paper follows shifts in how stakeholders have been organised, coordinated and steered since 2010 when Rwanda’s National Forestry Policy came into force, a year ahead of Rwanda’s pledge to the Bonn Challenge. The specific focus is on Bugesera District, representing a national policy shift from focusing on restoration in highland areas only. Bugesera is a lowland area facing complex socio-ecological and livelihood challenges including high rates of deforestation, recurrent drought and rapid population fluctuations. This paper analyses these changes by investigating which stakeholders were involved, how they were engaged (modes of participation) and why they participated (drivers of participation). Conceptually, this follows stakeholder mapping, Reed’s theory of participation and multi-level governance theory. Through thematic analysis, we triangulated data from 15 policy-related documents with semi-structured interviews with representatives from 24 organisations. Our findings show that both before and after 2010, stakeholder engagement has remained top-down. However, since 2010 this has been qualified by an asymmetrical form of collaboration that increasingly takes the form of top-down deliberation. Changes were observed in participation patterns, engagement approaches, and governance arrangements, driven by contextual conditions, power relations, process design, and spatial–temporal dynamics. Within a centrally coordinated government system, shaped by the post-genocide political context and culturally embedded structures such as Umuganda and Ubudehe, multistakeholder restoration initiatives have largely remained state-led, with structured approaches to coordination and implementation that have varied in the extent of local stakeholder engagement. Trust emerged as an important factor influencing stakeholder interactions. Despite more diverse and expanded institutional arrangements over time, variations in levels of participation and influence among stakeholders persist, with differences in how engagement and decision-making power are distributed. We conclude that effective stakeholder engagement is contingent on existing governance structures, the political will to engage with a diversity of actors at different levels, contextual conditions including spatial-temporal dynamics, and opportunities provided by global and regional restoration frameworks.