Local organizations are key to the implementation of new regulations regarding governance of community forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, it remains uncertain how the dynamics and power relations within these local organizations affect the governance of community forests. We tackled this uncertainty by investigating how local groups favour citizen participation in the establishment and management of two local community forest concessions (LCFCs). Data from household surveys (N = 101), focus group discussions (N = 11) and semi-structured interviews (N = 49) were used to document citizen dynamics and to compare the types of groups, their compositions, and the activities that were conducted by their members. Our results show diverse local citizen groups, each composed of individuals with common interests, are involved in LCFC governance. These groups provide platforms for local people to share their knowledge and experiences, interests and concerns. Citizen groups further provide learning opportunities for local people and provide a foundation for effective LCFC governance. Traditionally marginalized groups such as youth, women and Indigenous people are still not represented fairly in LCFC decision-making bodies. Indeed, main income-generating activities such as logging are controlled by men and outsiders from urban areas. Regulatory reforms are needed to ensure equitable benefit sharing and participation of all stakeholders in decision-making, while reducing conflicts and increasing the sense of ownership.

Climate change affects timings, frequency, and intensity of frost events in northern ecosystems. However, our understanding of the impacts that frost will have on growth and survival of plants is still limited. When projecting the occurrence of frost, the internal variability and the different underlying physical formulations are two major sources of uncertainty of climate models. We use 50 climate simulations produced by a single-initial large climate ensemble and five climate simulations produced by different pairs of global and regional climate models based on the concentration pathway (RCP 8.5) over a latitudinal transect covering the temperate and boreal ecosystems of western Quebec, Canada, during 1955-2099 to provide a first-order estimate of the relative importance of these two sources of uncertainty on the occurrence of frost, i.e. when air temperature is < 0 °C, and their potential damage to trees. The variation in the date of the last spring frost was larger by 21 days (from 46 to 25 days) for the 50 climate simulations compared to the 5 different pairs of climate models. When considering these two sources of uncertainty in an eco-physiological model simulating the timings of budbreak for trees of northern environment, results show that 20% of climate simulations expect that trees will be exposed to frost even in 2090. Thus, frost damage to trees remains likely under global warming.