Traditional Authorities as Security Actors: Customary Law, Community Protection, and State Relations

This methodology article proposes a novel, mixed-methods framework for empirically assessing the role of traditional authorities as security actors within environmental governance in the Republic of Congo. It addresses a critical gap in methodological approaches for studying the intersection of customary law, community-based protection, and state environmental policy. The framework combines spatial analysis of land-use conflicts, ethnographic fieldwork on dispute resolution, and institutional mapping of state-traditional authority relations. The article illustrates the application of this methodology in the context of community forestry and protected area management in the Sangha and Likouala departments. The proposed approach aims to generate robust, spatially-explicit data on how customary systems contribute to human security and environmental outcomes, offering a replicable model for interdisciplinary research at the nexus of demography, geography, and environmental science.