- Forest Day and the global perspective on forests and climate change
- Counting carbon to make carbon count
- REDD+: Location, location, location …
- Coping with climate change in Costa Rica
- Transforming tenure in Guatemala
- There’s more to conservation than wildlife
- Indonesia’s lessons for REDD+
- Cameroon’s foresters align rules with reality
- Setting the standards for small-scale forestry
Cameroon’s foresters align rules with reality
Cameroon’s experience with community forestry is instructive. Although many villages have been able to raise a substantial income from timber sales, community forests have failed to realise their true potential. This is largely because the procedures for establishing and managing community forests were, until recently, far too complicated.
‘In the past, many communities realised that if they rigidly followed the Manual of Procedures they would make very little money,’ explains CIFOR scientist Guillaume Lescuyer. So they failed to abide by the letter of the law and in 2006 over 50 community forestry associations lost their harvesting licences. Undeterred, many continued to harvest timber – illegally.
The first attempt to revise the Manual of Procedures was undertaken by a network of civil society groups. The process accelerated in 2006 when a number of organisations, including CIFOR, took a fresh look at the manual. In December 2008, the Ministry of Forests and Fauna held a workshop in the capital, Yaoundé, convening some 80 people who had been involved in the discussions. This led to a revised manual, which came into force in 2009. The Ministry said they appreciated CIFOR’s guidance and suggestions through the revision process, and lauded the science–policy collaboration moving forward.
The new manual simplifies the regulations governing community forestry and ensures that the financial affairs of the associations managing community forests are more transparent.
