Forest Governance Challenges on Mount Cameroon All images copyright Emmanuel Nuesiri. (left to right, top to bottom) Image 1: Signpost on main access road to the community forest. Image 2: Oil palm producers in the community forest. Image 3: Fish drying in Dikolo village Bimbia. Image 4: Timber from the community forest. Image 5: Charcoal production in the community forest. Forest Governance Challenges on Mount Cameroon Emmanuel O. Nuesiri Mt. Cameroon, part of the Cameroon Highlands ecoregion, is situated at 4” 13’ N, and 9” 10’ E. At 4100m, it is the highest peak in West/Central Africa and is an active volcano with major activity last occurring in 2000. he Cameroon Highlands is a biodiversity hotspot1 and its fertile volcanic soil has also made it a hotspot for both subsistence and commercial agricultural activities since the late 19th century. Plantations on Mt. Cameroon supply the world market with cash crops such as tea, cofee, rubber and bananas. he indigenous inhabitants of the region, the Bakweri, constitute about 10% of the population2 whereas the other 90% of the population is made up of people from other parts of Cameroon and other nearby countries including Nigeria and Benin. he inhabitants’ dependence on farming and the heterogeneous population structure has posed great diiculties to the implementation of sustainable and participatory forest management on Mt. Cameroon. his article relects on these challenges through a case study of the Bimbia-Bonadikombo community forest (BBCF), an on-going forest management initiative inspired by the Mount Cameroon Project (MCP), IHDP Update 2.2008 Limbe. his integrated conservation and development project was implemented from 1994 – 2002 with funding from the Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government. his article proceeds with a brief review of the origins and adoption of community forests in Cameroon, emphasising the socio-political context under which it was adopted. It then shows the governance challenges of implementing community forestry on Mt. Cameroon and concludes with comments on the governance of Mt. Cameroon’s forests. Community forestry: Origins and adoption in Cameroon he origin of community forestry discourse can be traced to participatory natural resource management movements3. Advocates argue that bringing local people into the decision making and management of forest resources has a positive impact on the sustainability of this resource. hey further 27 Forest Governance Challenges on Mount Cameroon argue that by using the sustainable use paradigm, participatory forest management strategies help to alleviate local poverty, building the managerial capacity and skills of local people. Opponents argue that participatory forestry leads to continued forest loss4. However, the participatory forestry rhetoric was appealing to donors who co-opted it, making it one of the conditions for forest aid from rich developing countries5. Cameroon’s deep economic recession of the late 1980s, brought about by a fall in commodity prices, forced the country to turn to the World Bank and IMF for aid. hese institutions prescribed a structural adjustment package that included the lay-of of government workers and required that the government reform its forest sector. hus, in 1994, the government enacted a new, decentralised forest law. Amongst other novelties, this new law allowed local people to obtain community forest status for forest land if they could prove their de facto traditional tenure rights6. he British government provided support to the forestry department to implement the community forest policy7. he policy states that the maximum size of forest area that can be applied for is 5000 hectares, which, if approved, will be under community management for a period of 25 years. hus a community is mandated to submit a management plan for the forest on both an annual and 5-yearly basis along with its application ile. his management plan must informed by a socioeconomic and an ecological survey conducted by the community. he community forest management team must also be a legally registered body complete with a clearly articulated organigramme, operational procedures and bylaws– requirements that are technically and inancially beyond the capacity of local communities in Cameroon8. he policy also gives the forestry department the authority to halt a community’s management rights if persuaded that the community is not adhering to the forest management plan. While some observers argue that the high cost associated with community forests in Cameroon exposes an agenda to ensure that control remains in government hands, others argue that policy shortcomings are due strictly to the novelty of the new policy7. It is under this socio-political context in 1998 that the MCP Limbe initiated the creation of the BimbiaBonadikombo community forest (BBCF). Governance challenges to creating the BBCF on Mt. Cameroon here are about 107 community forests in diferent parts of Cameroon covering 400,000 hectares of forest9. he Bimbia- 28 Map 1: Land use pattern in the Mt. Cameroon region Bonadikombo community forest (BBCF), the only approved entity in the Mt. Cameroon region, is situated in the Limbe sub-division of the Fako division of Cameroon’s South West Province. It lies south of the Limbe-Douala highway, a key route for petrol tankers taking fuel from the Limbe reinery to Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital. he BBCF is surrounded by three cities that are within an hour’s drive from its boundaries: Tiko to the east, Limbe to the west, and Mutengene to the north. here are also 11 other, smaller settlements and three agricultural plantation workers’ camps within an hour’s walk from the BBCF. he region is, without a doubt, an area facing extreme anthropogenic pressure, as shown in the map below. he indigenous Bakweri are a literate and politically informed minority group, which have always held prominent governmental posts with both the past and present Prime Minister of Cameroon, who is also of Bakweri origin. heir prominence results from the fact that they had the irst cash crop plantations in Cameroon and that education played an important role in their society from very early on, with the irst school built in their region by missionaries in 1850. he Bakweri were thus among the irst set of educated elites in the country, while the entrepreneurial elites proited from the plantation economy10. his exposure to the forces of 19th century globalisation led to rapid urbanisation in the Bakweri’s land as well as the birth of a class of colonial elites under Bakweri leadership and an inlux of migrants. While the traditional livelihood of the Bakweri is constituted by ishing and hunting, a high proportion of Bakweris now work in the civil service and private sector. IHDP Update 2.2008 Forest Governance Challenges on Mount Cameroon he indigenous Bakweri, as a group, are not as directly dependent on the forest for their livelihoods as is the migrant population. he Cameroonian migrant populations are heavily involved in farming, while the foreign migrants from Nigeria and Benin are more involved in ishing. he population’s occupational structure shows two broad trends: farmers dominate village type settlements, while peri-urban settlements close to Limbe city have mixed populations of farmers, public, private and informal sector employees. his was the socio-economic context under which the MCP Limbe developed a participatory biodiversity conservation strategy (PBCS) for the Mt. Cameroon region11. he PBCS was developed through participatory consultations with indigenous peoples, migrants, government departments and the private sector in the Mt. Cameroon region. he PBCS is currently implemented through the participatory land-use plan (PLUP), which maps out areas within the region, set aside for expansion of settlements, agriculture, community forests and biodiversity conservation. In order for the various actors to fulil their roles in the smooth execution of the PLUP, the MCP Limbe carried out several workshops on capacity building for the forestry department and all other actors. MCP Limbe also worked with the local people in the Mt. Cameroon region towards the creation of four community forests. However, only the Bimbia-Bonadikombo community forest (BBCF) succeeded in gaining government approval before the MCP Limbe ended in 200212, and still remains the only approved community forest in the region. he creation of the BBCF met with greater success than the other three initiatives, because Bimbia has been a main site of global-local exchange since the 19th century10. his meant that the BBCF application received greater attention from MCP Limbe and the forestry department than did the other three community forest applications. his historic and deep immersion of Bimbia into global processes and other socio-economic characteristics of the Mt. Cameroon region contributed to the challenges faced by the MCP Limbe during the creation of the BBCF. hese include unresolved land tenure contestations, high use pressure in the Mt. Cameroon forest area, indigenous elite interest and gaps in the community forestry policy. Each of these is briely explained in the paragraphs that follow below. Unresolved land tenure contestations Land tenure issues increased the diiculty of the Mt. Cameroon Project to achieve its objectives. Cameroon Land Or- IHDP Update 2.2008 dinance No. 74-1 of July 6, 1974 maintains that the State is the guardian of all lands. However, traditional authorities continue to exercise de facto rights over land. In the Mt. Cameroon region, the indigenous Bakweris are locked in a legal battle against the Cameroonian government to reclaim the lands hosting the government-owned agricultural plantations13. hese plantations were initially set up during colonial era by European entrepreneurs but were passed on to the government of Cameroon upon gaining independence. he Bakweris claim the land was expropriated from them without compensation, and they are thus demanding that this land be returned to them. herefore, in the BimbiaBonadikombo area, the immigrants who depend substantially on the forest for their livelihoods cannot obtain de jure or de facto rights over the land. his precarious land tenure position makes the non-indigenes unable to fully embrace participatory forestry. High use pressure in the Bimbia-Bonadikombo forest area Botanic surveys of the forest area led by experts from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, showed that the area was of high conservation value and they called for the forest to be designated a protected area. he high use pressure and the signiicance of this forest to the livelihoods of much of the population made it impossible for the government to give the forest this protected status12. his constraint, alongside government and donor pressure on the MCP Limbe to pilot the participatory ethos in the new forest policy of 1994, led to the decision to opt for community forestry instead. Indigenous elite interest he most challenging actors encountered by the MCP Limbe were the indigenous Bakweri elites, who articulated their position through two indigenously-controlled institutions, the Victoria Land and Forest Conservation Committee (VLFCC) and the Victoria Area Rainforest Common Interest Group (VARCIG). hese institutions were used to defend the de facto traditional rights of the Bakweri over the forest against the de jure rights of the government and the use-rights of the non-indigenes. he project’s objective of creating an inclusive and equitable management team for the community forest was strongly resisted by the indigenes and, therefore, 70% of the Bimbia-Bonadikombo Natural Resources Management Council (BBNRMC) managing the community forest is of indigenous origin2. he elite position is partly driven by a desire to protect the economic rents 29 Forest Governance Challenges on Mount Cameroon they receive from the non-indigenes using the forest as well as by a fear of being politically dominated by the more numerous non-indigenous population and forest users. tionists possess an understanding of the historic and social context. mri mountain research initiative Failure of community forestry policy to define ‘community’ he land tenure diiculties and indigenous elite recalcitrance to an inclusive management framework for the community forest is related to a signiicant gap in Cameroon’s community forestry policy. he policy fails to clarify what constitutes a community, leaving this key socio-political concept to local interpretations, which tends to view community as a group bounded exclusively by ethnicity14. his exclusive stance undermines the inclusive ethos underlying participatory forestry discourse. Not deining community is not only a signiicant policy failure, but also a missed opportunity to address issues of equity and citizenship. Forest governance on Mt. Cameroon While decentralised and participatory forest management has the potential to win the hearts and minds of local people, guiding them towards sustainable forest management, in highly heterogeneous locales such as the Mt. Cameroon region, the multiplicity of actors and processes makes sustainable forestry a daunting challenge. his is linked to cultural ruptures in these societies, which manifest themselves in the ‘indigene’ and ‘migrant’ discourses readily observable in socio-political life at both the local and national scale. In this context, inclusive participatory processes sometimes aggravate ethnocentric passions, as dominant groups fear the loss of power and the socio-economic privileges that come with it. Participatory forestry has, however, given conservationists insight into the deep inluence of ethnicity in sociopolitical relations in Cameroon across all spatial scales. his knowledge bodes well for contemporary conservation eforts in the Mt. Cameroon region, such as the Cameroonian government’s on-going programme to create the Mt. Cameroon National Park in partnership with the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). Conservationists in the region now understand the social dynamics that could stand in the way of efective programme implementation and are more appreciative of the need for staf with the social knowhow and skills required to negotiate sustainable solutions with the local populace. he experiences from Mt. Cameroon and other regions around the globe have brought about awareness that sustainable forest management in mountain regions has a better chance of succeeding when conserva- 30 he author is a member of MRI's Global Change Research Network in African Mountains  1. 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Yaounde: MINEF. 7. Djeumo A. 2001. he development of community forests in Cameroon: origins, current situation and constraints. Rural Development Forestry Network Paper 25b. 8. Adeleke W. 2006. Analysis of Community Forest Processes and Implementation in Cameroon. Report Prepared for WWF-Central Africa Programme Oice Yaounde Cameroon. 9. Cuny P, Ango AA, Ondoa ZA. 2007. Local and decentralized forest management in Cameroon: he case of the Kongo community forest. In: Oberndorf R, Durst P, Mahanty S, Burslem K, Suzuki R, editors. A Cut for the Poor. FAO Conference Proceedings Publications. http://www.blccarchives.org/2006/07/african_human_r. html#more; accessed on 24 August 2008. 10. Ardener E. 1996. Kingdom on Mount Cameroon: Studies in the History of the Cameroon Coast, 1500-1970. Providence; Oxford: Berghan. 11. Forbes A, Besong J. 2002. Participatory biodiversity conservation strategy for Mt. Cameroon. Cameroon Mountain Biodiversity and Livelihood (CMBL) Series Paper 1. 12. RCDC [Regional Centre for Development and Conservation]. 2002. he Viable Resource Management Model for Participatory Biodiversity Conservation in the Bimbia-Bonadikombo Area. Limbe: RCDC. 13. BLCC [Bakweri Land Claims Committee]. 2006. African human rights commission rules on Bakweri vs. Cameroon land case. 14. Egbe SE. 2001. he concept of community forestry under Cameroonian law. Journal of African Law 45 (1): 25-50. IHDP Update 2.2008