A Theoretical Framework for Adaptive Governance of Forest Commons Under Climate Stress in the Nigerian Guinea Savanna

The governance of forest commons in the Nigerian Guinea savanna confronts intensifying stress from climate variability, demographic pressure, and institutional fragmentation, exposing limitations in existing adaptive governance theories developed primarily in temperate and tropical Latin American contexts. This study develops and empirically tests an original theoretical framework for adaptive forest commons governance under climate stress, integrating insights from social-ecological systems theory, polycentric governance, and African political ecology. A comparative case study design examined twelve forest commons governance arrangements across Kaduna, Niger, and Kwara States, representing a spectrum of governance forms from state-dominated to community self-organised. Primary data were collected through 144 in-depth interviews, participatory governance mapping, and longitudinal vegetation monitoring over four years. The proposed framework identifies three core adaptive mechanisms: institutional bricolage, polycentricity, and resource signalling feedback, and proposes that their co-presence determines governance resilience under climatic shocks. Empirical testing through qualitative comparative analysis identified institutional bricolage as the necessary condition for governance persistence across all resilient cases. Polycentric arrangements outperformed monocentric alternatives under high climate variability scenarios. Communities with strong informal monitoring systems responded significantly faster to vegetation threshold crossings. The framework provides a generalisable middle-range theory for forest commons governance applicable across the West African Guinea savanna biome, and its propositions are falsifiable through future longitudinal comparative research. Keywords: adaptive governance, forest commons, climate stress, Guinea savanna, social-ecological systems