Enterprise in the Undergrowth: Exploring the Ways Chinese Companies Operate in the Dja Forest in Cameroon

Chinese company activity in African forests is often portrayed in oversimplified terms --as a much-needed driver of development or an unwelcome and unconstrained free-for-all. The resulting weak understanding also leads to a low level of engagement by government and nongovernmental actors with the operations of these companies on the ground. By examining Chinese engagements in Cameroon's Dja forest area and avoiding seeing Chinese companies as a homogenous collective, we tease out the heterogeneity in their business profiles, operational practices, and impacts on local communities and the forests. We analyze how Chinese companies, in particular, smalland medium-sized timber enterprises, operate and engage with government. We find that business creativity, which could conceivably be the seedbed for sustainability, is in practice stifled by everyday operations embedded within and enabled by the informal rules and practices that condition the “real” functioning of forestry governance in Cameroon

Gestion décentralisée des ressources forestières : revue des initiatives de foresterie communale dans les pays membrs de la COMIFAC

International audienceLa foresterie communale constitue l’une des options qui structure la gestion forestière en Afrique centrale. Le relatif échec de la foresterie communautaire et la désillusion de l’impact des revenus forestiers décentralisés sur le bien-être des populations locales ont réorienté le discours des partenaires au développement et de la société civile internationale vers la foresterie décentralisée, perçue comme une opportunité pour une gouvernance environnementale améliorée et le gage de la participation effective des populations locales à la gestion des ressources forestières. Le discours sur la foresterie décentralisée est séduisant non seulement en raison des opportunités qu’elle ouvre pour le développement local, mais surtout parce que la conjoncture internationale et les dynamiques sous régionales s’y prêtent au regard du discours global sur le changement climatique et le rôle que les collectivités publiques infra-étatiques pourraient jouer dans la mise en œuvre du processus REDD

Logging concessions and local livelihoods in Cameroon : From indifference to alliance?

Sustainable forest management gives the opportunity to better integrate the way local populations use their customary "village terroirs" in the logging activities. This requirement is explicitly stated in all forest laws of the Congo Basin countries but its implementation on the field remains under documented. In Cameroon, 30 forest management plans (FMP) for logging concessions have been reviewed to assess how they effectively include customary use rights. The integration of use rights into the FMPs is heterogeneous but always with very low enforcement. The weak influence of the FMP application on local practices is confirmed with an empirical survey that shows that natural, financial, and physical capitals in two villages of the eastern region of Cameroon have been little affected by the adjoining logging concession over the latest 13 years. Extrasector policies such as agriculture, road infrastructure, techniques, and land tenure are the real drivers of socioeconomic change at the local scale. Their impacts are facilitated by the presence of the logging concessions, which can contribute indirectly to improve local livelihoods. (Résumé d'auteur

The Context of REDD+ and adaptation to climate change in Burkina Faso : Drivers, agents and institutions

Peer reviewe