Livelihood and Conservation: Reconciling Communities’ Livelihood needs and Conservation Strategies in the Bechati forest area, Western Cameroon (original) (raw)
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2017
Greater Virunga Transboundary Landscape (GVTL) is highly known for its abundance of wildlife resources and mostly flagship and endangered species such as Mountain Gorillas. Despite this importance, parks across GVTL continue to face enormous pressure from neighboring communities who harvest park resources illegally. This illegal harvest has sparked off intense park-community conflicts, community resentment and continuous poaching. To reduce them, community conservation enterprises (CCEs) were established across GVTL. The belief was that these CCEs provide and enhance socioeconomic benefits to local communities which will in turn improve their household livelihoods. This will ensure that communities, in theory, will be less dependent on park resources, thereby reducing park-community conflicts, resentment and poaching. However, little is known about these CCEs, and how much they have improved community livelihoods and v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people deserve my gratitude and appreciation. Without their support, guidance and encouragement, this dissertation would not be what it is. I am eternally grateful to Dr. Brett A. Wright (Committee Chair
Journal of Environmental Management, 2005
Biodiversity conservation has emerged within the past two decades as one of the most important global challenges confronting national planners, world bodies, professionals and academics. Governments faced with increasing biodiversity loss as a result of human activities have resorted to the creation of protected areas as a strategy to both slow down habitat loss and/or degradation and eventually mitigate species extension and reduction rates. However, the creation of a protected area can have strong implications on the livelihoods of people inhabiting the forest and depending on it, especially those caught within its borders. The involvement of such inhabitants in the management process of the protected area can be profitable. This paper discusses the case of the Korup National Park, Cameroon, considered in the late 1980s by some to be a flagship of conservation and development efforts, and later on in the late 1990s by others as a catastrophic failure as an example of integrated conservation and development. As a means of updating the program's management information base, an in-depth participatory and socio-ecological survey was conducted by some of the program's technical staff. This study aimed at appraising the extent to which the Park's human community of 4200 inhabitants continued to relate to its resources and depend on them for their livelihood. The aim was to evaluate the potential links between the communities' livelihood and the long-term management and survival of the Park as the important biodiversity conservation zone it had been found to be. Results indicate that the successful management of a Park like Korup may well depend on the involvement of the local communities; and that successful management through approaches that minimize the potential contributions and aspirations of the local people is difficult to achieve.
This report summarizes preliminary results of a project designed to build community based conservation capacity (CBC) by asssisting local communities in the buffer zone of the Bayang-Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary (BMWS) to obtain legal tenure over their forest resources through the establishment of a community forest. The area proposed for the community forest is located in Upper Banyang subdivision (9° 30' E, 5° 10' N) and is part of the Cameroon Highlands ecoregion (see Maps 1 & 2). This ecoregion is a recognized biodiversity hotspot (WWF, 2003) and is home to a number of endangered species including the Elephant Loxodonta africana cyclotis), Chimpanzee (Pan troglodyte), Drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) and Dwarf Crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis) (IUCN, 2003). Cameroon's Forestry Law of 1994 allows for community-based conservation (CBC) in the form of co-management of protected areas, joint management of wildlife sanctuaries as well as community forests. In reponse to a request from the communities involved, this project aims to build the biodiversity conservation capacity of the Tali and Bara communities located in the forested gap between the BMWS and the Upper Banyang Forest Concession (UBFC) through the establishment there of a community forest. The forest area concerned favours the CBC ethos because it is not only rich in biodiversity but contributes substantially to the livelihood of the communities in the forest area. The project itself was initiated in 2003 when the chief of the Ebensuk community of Upper Banyang Sub-division put forward a request to the present team on behalf of his community and the adjacent Mambo community for technical assistance in setting up a community forest. Our response to this specific request and subsequent findings from our research efforts in the region is the subject of this report. Briefly, it was learned that the entirety of Ebensuk-Mambo’s communal lands had been granted, without their knowledge or consent, to the forest concession. These circumstances led us to re-orientate the project to the adjacent Tali and Bara communities, who expressed interest in community forestry upon learning about our activities in Ebensuk-Mambo. It will be managed to generate alternative sources of income that will reduce pressures on forest resources and ease conflicts between community development priorities and conservation. The report itself is organized into 4 sections presenting the research results and a final concluding section with future directions. The 4 sections are: Section 1: Community Sensitizations and Initial Formation of Ad-hoc forest management committee o Provides a log of team efforts to sensitize the communities involved, including an discussion of village politics that might affect the project. Section 2: Socio-economic Surveys o Presents preliminary results of forest use in the Ebensuk-Mambo and Tali-Bara communities. Section 3: Community Forest Management Inventory o This report is divided into two section, botanical and wildlife surveys, which point to the rich biodiversity in the Tali-Bara communal lands. This includes direct observation of Elephant (Loxodonta africana cyclotis). Section 4: Stakeholder Discussions o Summarizes the complex issues the project is presented with as it tries to implement a community forest in a stretch of forest that is also of interest to major stakeholders such as Wijma Forest Company, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and government.
Conservation Livelihoods in Cross River State Nigeria USAID PDACK40520200713 107237 1yc9t0t
USAID Project Final Report (http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf\_docs/PDACK405.pdf), 2007
The Sustainable Practices in Agriculture for Critical Environments (SPACE) project applied a decentralized, participatory approach of community-level learning on the edge of the forest as a practical base for developing the common understanding, agreement, and action necessary to conserve some of the largest intact lowland tropical rain forest remnants in West Africa, which are home to numerous primate species, including the most endangered gorilla subspecies on Earth. The project took a first step toward ensuring protection of a globally important natural heritage through strengthening local governance and developing sound economic incentives for conservation. The SPACE project developed and applied a decentralized, participatory approach of community-level learning and action that linked governance, economic development, and conservation to help stakeholders strengthen governance and market relationships, and institutional and individual capacities and practices. ` While the accomplishments and numbers demonstrate the results of changes in attitudes, skills, and relationships, the duration of the project was too short to ensure that the nascent habits and partnerships will continue to grow and spread. Developing the conditions that enable truly sustainable management will require considerably more time and will benefit from more consistent donor and government investment. In Nigeria (as elsewhere), holding to principles of participation, transparency, and equitable access to resources often threatens some powerful interests. By enhancing trust and commitment, the SPACE projected helped diverse stakeholders strengthen relationships and limit instability during periods of turbulence. The project provided lessons relevant to key issues facing all of Nigeria: peaceful governance, learning amidst diversity and change, and sustainable economic growth—while fully addressing its conservation objectives.
Combining Conservation & Community Empowerment to Protect Grauer’s Gorillas
2021
As authors of this Group Project report, we archive this report on the Bren School's website such that the results of our research are available for all to read. Our signatures on the document signify our joint responsibility to fulfill the archiving standards set by the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
Human Ecology, 2018
Forest management practices that aim to mitigate the threats of deforestation and forest degradation can inadvertently threaten the ability of forest-dependent local populations to meet basic daily sustenance needs. Stakeholder engagement can help find common ground between environmental goals and the livelihood needs of local populations. A starting point for local stakeholder engagement is to gather insights into how forest management differentially impacts the livelihoods and well-being of these populations, which may be quite heterogeneous in their perspectives and livelihood needs. Towards this end, we conducted semistructured first-person interviews in forest-dependent communities in Cameroon about perspectives on and suggestions about forest resources and management. This study provides insights into commonalities and differences of perspectives within and among local populations and supports the use of stakeholder engagement strategies that facilitate bidirectional communication and take into consideration diverse perspectives and priorities.
2010
This report summarises the findings of a study, conducted between 2001 and 2002, which aimed to test the effectiveness of these strategies in reconciling biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development interests, in particular through interventions that both improved livelihoods and resulted in increased support for biodiversity conservation, in terms of the attitudes and behaviours of local communities. The study reviewed some of the common assumptions associated with ICD interventions, specifically those that seek to link local people to park resources and those that seek to break this link.
International Journal of Current Research in Biosciences and Plant Biology, 2016
There has been rampant encroachment on Cameroons protected forest landscapes in the last few years. This has resulted to the loss of substantial parts of the forest cover through cultivation for agriculture, settlements, charcoal processing, logging and hunting. The principal target group for this research was the local forest community in and around Tubah Upland Forest who wrestle their living from this forest. The data collection involved an oral interview and questionnaire administration. The results showed that Gender and the awareness of wildlife laws in Tubah region correlated significantly (r 2 =0.726 at p<0.05) gender. Also, the importance of forest resources had a significant correlation with solutions to wildlife conflict (r 2 =0.379 at p<0.05). In addition, the reason for settlement also had a significant relationship with organizations mitigating human-wildlife conflict (r 2 =0.863 at p<0.05) with NGO'S such as CIRMAD (The Care for Indigenous Resources Management and Development) working to raise conservation awareness in the area. Furthermore, the investigation on the importance of forest resources recorded 67.88% on forest exploitation. Edible plants rich in protein accounted for 16.57% in the survey. Moreso, the solutions to human-wildlife conflict also recorded 77.78%, confirming very little help is given to local people by the government authorities. Finally wildlife contact rate recorded 11.52%, 8.08%, 44.24%, and 36.16% respectively for very frequent, infrequent, frequent, and no contact rates. This survey revealed the importance of the corporation and integration of the local community in forest conservation decision-making.
Society & Natural Resources, 2011
The disappointing performance of integrated conservation and development projects has been partly blamed on the lack of linkage between the development intervention and the expected conservation outcome, resulting in projects that rarely achieve the sought-after “win–win” outcomes. While this study replicates findings about the difficulties of establishing successful linkages, it also seeks to go beyond problem identification, by evaluating responses initiated within a long-term conservation initiative, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, that has since 1991 worked with communities as part of its efforts to protect mountain gorillas and their habitats. The principal lesson that emerges from interviews with IGCP partner organizations relates to the benefits of a “conservation logic” in which conservation and development outcomes are linked through mutual dependence but also contractual conditionality.