Sustainable Forest Management at the Local Scale: A Comparative Analysis of Community Forests and Domestic Forests in Cameroon (original) (raw)
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Impacts of community forests on livelihoods in Cameroon: lessons from two case studies
Community forestry is considered a tool for decentralisation and devolution and as efficient strategy to achieve the multiple goals of sustainable resource management and poverty alleviation. However, evidence worldwide has shown mixed results. A financial, economic and environmental cost-benefit analysis of two community forests in Cameroon revealed that community forests are economically and environmentally profitable, and benefit communities more, compared to a baseline situation. Sharp differences between the economic and financial returns highlight the importance of conditional factors. These include the communities' technical and managerial skills, access to finance, legal resources and market information, and the communities' capacity for vertical integration. The cases highlight the limitations of the current regulatory and policy framework as a determining influence on the exploitation of community forests and conclude there is a pressing need for institutional and organizational reforms within the governmental and support apparatus to increase the profitability and equity of community forestry.
Conservation and Society, 2012
This paper interrogates the state of livelihoods under the exercise of new community rights to forest in rural Cameroon. The assessment makes use of a set of livelihoods indicators. The granting and exercise of new community rights, namely, management rights and market rights, are not synonymous with improved livelihoods, despite initial predictions and expectations. The resource base has not changed; it is more and more threatened by poor local level institutional arrangements and social and bio-physical management strategies, in addition to the weak central level regulation and monitoring actions. Similarly, the rights-based reform and community forestry are not improving basic assets and means at the household level. Nevertheless, this paper suggests that this experiment should not be judged hastily, since fi fteen years are not enough to judge social and institutional processes like those in progress in Cameroon. The authors draw policy options likely to improve the livelihoods dimension of the reform and launch a debate on the real contribution of community income derived from community forests towards poverty alleviation at the household level.
This study assessed the extent, patterns and socio-demographic determinants of community forest use and dependence for livelihood in three community forests areas in Fako Division, Cameroon. The data, collected principally through a questionnaire administered to 295 selected community members, was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science 20. The study found that most (61.3%) of the respondents directly use the community forest, principally for fuelwood collection (89.4%), NTFPs harvesting (41.3%), subsistence farming (40%) and timber exploitation (25.7%). Community forest use was significantly predicted by user's location (p=0.039), gender (p=0.011), primary occupation (p=0.00), level of education (p=0.00), income level (p=0.023), origin (p=0.010) and membership in Community Forest Management Group (p=0.025). Furthermore, it was observed that most (53.1%) of the forest users depended on the forest for 61-100% of their household food, energy and material needs while the sales of forest resources accounted for 61-100% of the monthly income of 57.9% others. The study concluded that community forest resources make up a considerable portion of the livelihood portfolio of many forest-fringe households in the area and recommended among other things improvements in the current land tenure policy to enable local stakeholders to fully embrace participatory forestry and the training of forest users on value adding activities to enhance returns from the commercialization of forest products.
Community forest use and dependence for livelihoods in Fako Division, South West Region of Cameroon
Greener Journal of Agronomy, Forestry and Horticulture, 2018
This study assessed the extent, patterns and socio-demographic determinants of community forest use and dependence for livelihood in three community forests areas in Fako Division, Cameroon. The data, collected principally through a questionnaire administered to 295 selected community members, was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science 20. The study found that most (61.3%) of the respondents directly use the community forest, principally for fuelwood collection (89.4%), NTFPs harvesting (41.3%), subsistence farming (40%) and timber exploitation (25.7%). Community forest use was significantly predicted by user's location (p=0.039), gender (p=0.011), primary occupation (p=0.00), level of education (p=0.00), income level (p=0.023), origin (p=0.010) and membership in Community Forest Management Group (p=0.025). Furthermore, it was observed that most (53.1%) of the forest users depended on the forest for 61-100% of their household food, energy and material needs while the sales of forest resources accounted for 61-100% of the monthly income of 57.9% others. The study concluded that community forest resources make up a considerable portion of the livelihood portfolio of many forest-fringe households in the area and recommended among other things improvements in the current land tenure policy to enable local stakeholders to fully embrace participatory forestry and the training of forest users on value adding activities to enhance returns from the commercialization of forest products.
Journal of Sustainable Development , 2013
This paper reconstructs and analyzes the establishment of the Community Forestry (CF) processes in Cameroon, questioning the extent to which the CF models can act as a decentralization and devolution tool. It includes community based natural resource management through programs/projects emphasizing biodiversity conservation and sustainable forest management directly involving the local communities. Thirteen communities were explored in the South West Region (SWR) of Cameroon. Samples selection was based on information about recent activities of the communities in the CF process. From this population, a simple random selection and later quantitative and qualitative interviews were carried out with more than 70 different stakeholders through their networking and interest representation in CF. Analysis show that the CF process is centralized, slow, long, complex and expensive, making it difficult for local communities to be an active part in policy implementation. Results also confirm that decentralization and devolution for sustainable local forest governance could offer the communities an opportunity to derive livelihoods from their forests, but the models and processes have also inhibited them through centralized control of the state and its development partners. Furthermore, it shows that CF as a decentralization tool has not really functioned.
2009
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the contribution of the traditional exploitation of timber, in a community framework, to the respect of governance principles in actions for the fight against poverty in some rural communities in Cameroon. In 1990, the government of Cameroon adopted laws on the freedom of association that authorised teaming up for the search of possibilities for a better economic welfare of populations. It is in line with this that in 1994, a new forest law which authorises willing communities to organise themselves and request the government to grant them a portion of the national forest of the public domain to be managed by them and for their personal interest. Also, and with the help of the international community, Cameroon elaborated in 1998 its first poverty reduction strategy paper that encouraged amongst others, community actions in the search of solutions to the economic crisis that stroke the country. Through the application of a logit model to the responses collected through a survey carried out on a sample of 200 individuals of the East region of Cameroon, it was noticed that timber exploitation in a community framework does not necessarily lead to the strengthening of the links of belonging to a common community, and to the equitable redistribution of revenues from the exploitation of the community forest.
Community forestry and the challenge of aligning with Cameroon's green economy
2011
nitiated more than two decades ago through forest legislations and policy reforms in Cameroon, community forestry has experienced mixed opportunities partly due to its evolution. After humble beginnings, it is now better established due to a review of the legal framework. With the demand for environmental standards, it attempts to align with the green economy. In Cameroon, the reforms aimed, among other objectives, at implementing a forestry based on people
Tropical Forests - The Challenges of Maintaining Ecosystem Services while Managing the Landscape, 2016
Council forests were officially enacted in Cameroon in 1994 as part of the forestry law reform. The law provided rural councils with the legal right to create their own forests estate within the Permanent Forest Estate (PFE) of the State, following the preparation of a management plan approved by the forest administration. In this chapter, we analyze the socioeconomic and climate change mitigation potentials of these forests and propose possible options for improving their socioeconomic importance as well as their ability to mitigate climate change. Results indicate that Cameroon's council forests provide socioeconomic opportunities to communities in which they are located including employment and revenue from the sale of timber and nontimber forest products emanating from these forests. Additionally, given their diversity in terms of the various forest types (e.g., humid dense evergreen forests, humid dense semideciduous forests, and gallery forests), these forests have enormous carbon stocks which can provide huge opportunities for international climate initiatives such as the REDD+ mechanism to be initiated within them as a potential for mitigating global climate change. The chapter identifies and discusses possible options for improving the socioeconomic and climate change mitigation potential of these forests. Progress on the options the chapter opines, will help in improving the contributions of these forests to socioeconomic development and climate change mitigation.
International Forestry Review, 2016
In Cameroon, sustainable timber management relies on the model of large logging concession. However, over the past fifteen years, small-scale logging has become a common activity, with two different forms. First, the creation of community forests in the late 1990s allowed village associations to legally harvest, process and trade timber, almost always with the support of external actors such as NGOs or private operators. Second, individual chainsaw milling, almost always informal, has grown considerably. The article compares the economic, social and environmental impacts of these two options of small-scale logging. Although much focus has been put on community forestry over the latest two decades, it remains a marginal activity with a turnover of less than € 2 million per year and a small impact on rural economies. Conversely, informal chainsaw milling represents an annual turnover of € 93 million, with a flow of revenues around € 30 million for the benefit of rural population. From an environmental perspective, none of the two options seems to substantially conserve or degrade forest resources, but more research is needed on the issue. The chainsaw milling sector remains largely ignored by-national and international-public policies in the attempts to achieve sustainable timber management in Cameroon. Some perspectives are proposed to legalise the small-scale logging sector without reducing its current socioeconomic impact on rural and urban livelihoods.