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Sustainable forest management at the local scale:

A comparative analysis of community and domestic forests in Cameroon

Guillaume LescuyerCIRAD-CIFOR Cameroon

POPULAR project

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Cameroonian Forest: a dichotomous space

• State private estate, where • specialized uses (logging, conservation,…)• under the regular control of administration• significant restrictions to other (local) uses

• Non Permanent Forest Estate, where• No strict regulation by the State and predominant customary informal regulations• Natural resources must be withdrawn for self-consumption only• except in Community Forests, claimed by communities and allocated by the State according to technical criteria

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Divergences between community and domestic forests

Community forest Domestic forest

Max 5000ha granted by the State for 25 years

No legal boundaries but legitimate “terroir”

Complex and costly procedure to request a CF

No cost

Managed by an official community entity

Regulated by families and lineages

Legal tenure on resources (but not land)

Customary (informal) ownership of land and resources

Products extracted from forest can be sold

Products only for self-consumption

According to a Simple Management Plan, validated by the State

According to customary rules, with no State control

Restriction to local uses No restriction to local uses

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Simple Management Plans review: Use rights restriction in CFs

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The CF rules in practiceImplementation of SMP

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Agriculture Hunting NTFP Timber

# C

F Inadapted

Adapted

• Sources of inappropriateness of CF rules:• Hard to convince stopping these basic (livelihoods and financial) activities, especially for the customary land owners• Refusal to set and run a village monitoring committee

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Assessing the comparative advantages of community and domestic forests:

the case of Nkolenyeng

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At the forest cover level

% of land without forest cover

Domestic forest 21%

Community forest 9%

Protected area 12%

Logging concesssion 11%

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At the vegetal biodiversity level

Community

forestDomestic

ForestLogging

concession

Shanon index 7,12 6,92 6,6

Simpson index 56,01 43,86 45,58

Total number of inventoried timber species 321 334 299

Density (stem/ha) 2620 2794 1592

Number of local HCV species 68 70 58

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Where local people extract forest resources

In the Community

Forest

Out the Community

Forest

Including domestic forest

NTFP 30% 70% 20%

Bushmeat 54% 46% 6%

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At the household income level

Shifting cultivation 1 393 65.6%Hunting 43 2.0%NTFP 54 2.6%Fishing 4 0.2%Local trade 73 3.4%Other commercial activities 293 13.8%Wage 94 4.4%from agricultural activities 38 (1.8%) from timber exploitation 56 (2.7%)Savings, gifts 167 7.9%TOTAL 2 122  

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Sustainable Livelihoods Impacts of the Community Forest

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Conclusion Main advantage of CF for local people: Openness and

visibility for external actors Irregular and distrustful relationships with timber tradersLeverage to touch civil society, administrations, fundersNew economic opportunities (REDD, palm plantation) ?

A significant cost to get a CF, born by external actors

A very partial application of the SMP:SMP must abide by some technical rules imposed by MINFOF

(conservation of forest cover, detailed inventory,…) that differ from local practices, rules and capacities

SMP is often not written by the communities; lack of ex post appropriation by rural population

SMP may concern fundamental (economic and social) activities, that cannot easily be changed for some households

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Conclusion The Community Forest remains a domestic forest

Customary tenure and regulations are recognized and enforced. Legal entities created to enforce CF are much weaker than customary institutions that regulate access to land and resources

No concrete restriction to local use (except logging). The only role of the legal entity is to harvest timber, while giving compensation to customary right-holders (“private wood”)

Micro-zoning of specialized areas is not effective: management of a combination of resources (agriculture, timber, NTFP,…) by the family/lineage

Resilience of the local socio-ecological systemNo significant benefit accruing from CF, while agriculture (mainly in

domestic forest) provides 2/3 of total household revenuesNo intentional conservative management of natural resourcesBarrier to any exogenous development initiative ?CF as a means to initiate a privatization of forest/land, but rather at the

family/individual scale ?