FSC or Business as usual? Social impacts of forest certification in Cameroon

FSC or Business as usual? Social impacts of forest certification in Cameroon The paradigm of Sustainable Forest Management is central in the forestry laws enacted over the latest decades in the Congo Basin countries. However its implementation, and hence effectiveness are questioned because of weak control and law enforcement by the forestry services. Under pressure from western markets, international NGOs and cooperation agencies, several logging companies have opted for privately certified forest management with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standard. The FSC scheme has a strong social component aiming at the optimal integration of local populations in the forest management process. The article examines the effectiveness of local organizations put in place around 9 FSC certified concessions from 3 logging companies in Cameroon and assesses the ?renewed? relationships with local communities. Overall, results show that social issues are better integrated in the management practices of certified companies as compared to non-certified one. The main success of forest certification is to transform violent conflict to latent tensions and move towards negotiated solutions instead of repression. However, remain very much the FSC promoted local organizations are financially and technically dependent on logging companies and face a lack of grassroots legitimacy. Even when FSC certified, logging companies tend to assess their initiatives towards communities more in terms of their existence than in terms of their actual effectiveness, which is still a step further from the actual adoption of concerned social forestry. (Résumé d'auteur

Le marché domestique du sciage artisanal en République du Congo. État des lieux, opportunités et défis

La République du Congo a adopté une loi forestière en 2000 qui met l'accent sur le secteur forestier industriel à grande échelle orienté vers l'exportation. Le bois d'oeuvre tiré d'une exploitation à plus petite échelle et tourné vers le marché intérieur a été négligé. Ce bois n'est pas enregistré dans les statistiques officielles et il est essentiellement produit sans titre valide. Or le Congo a paraphé en 2009 puis signé en 2010 l'Accord de partenariat volontaire (APV) avec la Commission européenne qui l'engage à assurer la légalité de toute la production nationale de bois d'ici à 2013. Si la préparation de la mise en oeuvre de l'APV est avancée pour les concessions forestières notamment dans la région septentrionale du pays, le secteur domestique du bois est encore largement ignoré dans ce processus. Ce rapport présente une évaluation quantitative et qualitative de ce marché intérieur du bois scié afin de dégager des options permettant sa légalisation et sa pérennité. Les estimations reposent sur un suivi permanent des entrées de sciages à Brazzaville entre août 2008 et novembre 2009, sur un suivi des flux de vente des sciages sur les marchés de Pointe Noire entre février et novembre 2009, et sur 62 entretiens réalisés avec des scieurs artisanaux dans quatre zones d'approvisionnement. Les estimations globales sur les ventes et la consommation de sciage pour une année sont récapitulées dans le tableau suivant. Si on exclut les sciages industriels vendus sur le marché domestique, la production de sciages informels dépasse le volume des exportations congolaises de sciages en 2009, année toutefois marquée par une crise de l'industrie forestière durant laquelle les exportations ont été deux fois inférieures au niveau moyen des cinq années précédentes. Ce sous-secteur emploie aujourd'hui un grand nombre de personnes, fournissant au moins 600 emplois directs permanents et 300 emplois occasionnels dans les deux villes. En zone rurale, l'activité de sciage artisanal produit au minimum l'équivalent de 2000 emplois directs. C'est largement inférieur à l'emploi généré aujourd'hui par le secteur industriel, estimé autour de 7500 emplois. Il s'agit d'une activité économique à part entière qui engendre un chiffre d'affaires annuel autour de 15 milliards de F.CFA, dont une partie alimente les économies rurales à hauteur de 3 milliards de F.CFA par an. Ces revenus en milieu rural proviennent de la vente des arbres par les propriétaires coutumiers et par les salaires versés aux manutentionnaires, à hauteur de 33 000 F.CFA par mètre cube de bois scié. Les autorités administratives déconcentrées bénéficient également de cette activité puisque la " parafiscalité " compose environ 18 % du coût de revient de la production de sciage artisanal en zone rurale, c'est-à-dire autour de 12 000 F. CFA/m3. Au total, ce sont environ 1,2 milliard de F.CFA qui sont indûment prélevés tous les ans par les représentants de certains services administratifs déconcentrés. Ce secteur du sciage artisanal fait face toutefois à plusieurs difficultés et menaces. Tout d'abord, l'exploitation actuelle semble mettre en cause la pérennité de la ressource puisque les scieurs parcourent des distances importantes pour accéder aux arbres et que ces derniers sont souvent de faible diamètre. Si les " bois rouges " sont majoritaires sur les marchés de Brazzaville et parviennent principalement par le fleuve Congo, les consommateurs de Pointe Noire privilégient l'okoumé (Aucoumea klaineana), notamment pour les coffrages. Deuxièmement, la réglementation forestière actuelle - principalement le permis spécial - semble peu en mesure d'attirer les scieurs informels vers la légalité. Une adaptation ou une révision des prescriptions légales serait utile pour faciliter l'accession à des pratiques légales. Cet accès facilité aux titres légaux d'exploitation devrait s'accompagner d'une professionnalisation des scieurs artisanaux, en termes techniques, financiers, et institutionnels. Enfi

Fallows, agroforests and forests: should tropical silviculture go beyond the forest margin?

Over the recent years, studies on small scale, chainsaw logging in a number of countries of West and Central Africa have documented the gap between timber production as recorded in official statistics vs. actual national production. The latter includes both the large-scale, industrial, export-oriented, forestry sector and the small-scale, artisanal one, largely feeding domestic and regional timber markets. In countries such as Ghana and Cameroon preliminary findings indicate that timber informally harvested in a range of agricultural land use units, such as fallows and cocoa-agroforests, contributes to about half of national production. We present the preliminary results of a series of studies conducted in two regions of Cameroon to assess timber stock and production in the rural mosaic and assess the sustainability of present exploitation practices. Results indicate that timber harvesting intensely focuses on, and is rapidly depleting, a handful of useful trees that farmers traditionally maintained on the rural land. Density, diameter distribution and basal area vary significantly by species and across the various agricultural units. Some species regenerate, in particular in the fallow units, but fuel wood extraction and pole production combined to field preparation practices seriously mine the reconstitution of the timber stock and its preservation across the fallow cycles. We conclude that models to join production of forestry and agricultural crops should be developed at the landscape level with a particular focus on the integration of the land uses that represent the largest portion of the rural mosaic, i.e. those with fallows, agroforests and secondary forests. Production and management tradeoffs (e.g. fallow length versus trees growth rates, damages to main crops, competition), and the factors that could enable the adoption of those models (e.g. land and trees tenure, options for alternative land uses) have to be carefully assessed. (Résumé d'auteur

Sustainable forest management policies in Central Africa. Taking the informal sector into account

For 20 years, the Congo Basin countries have been implementing policies aimed at the sustainable management of their forest resources and at poverty reduction. These policies target the major timber concessions, whose production is exported, but overlook the informal small-scale chainsaw milling sector, which supplies domestic and regional markets. Yet this sector has taken the lead in terms of the volume of timber produced and provides jobs and income. At a time when States are increasingly urged to guarantee the legality – or even sustainability – of their production, it is urgent that they implement policies to ensure their small-scale chainsaw milling operations are more sustainable and to formalise the sector

Contributions of community and individual small-scale logging to sustainable timber management in Cameroon

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 socio-economic impact on rural and urban livelihoods. (Résumé d'auteur

Will the DRC community forest model be viable?

Since the second half of the 2000s, several options on the implementation of community forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been discussed in the country's technical and political circles. Propositions and pilot testing have increased in the last 2-3 years, in parallel with the promise of substantial international funding. As a result, several initiatives have been tested or are under development in the forest area of the DRC. Yet, the regulatory framework remains incomplete and very much debated. In the absence of a clear regulation and indeed political direction, the funding of current initiatives is often proposed with divergent purposes and conducted with different approaches. We reviewed the current experiences and found that none has conducted an estimation of the potential financial return of the business models they elaborated for/with the concerned communities. We thus conducted a socio-economic feasibility study for three case studies in Orientale province, by estimating the costs of developing/implementing activities and the benefits expected for communities on a 5 years horizon. Four main results are drawn from this analysis: (1) all experiences show a negative financial performance, the initial and implementation costs being significantly above the medium-term profits; (2) the main benefit expected by communities is clarifying and securing their customary land tenure; (3) a majority of the activities conducted in the framework of the 'community forest' model deal with rural development and not forestry operations per se, and therefore could be promoted and conducted without having to engage in a process of designing, establishing and maintaining the community forest model; (4) local organizations set up to oversee community forests are complex, expensive and little known by most inhabitants. We conclude by discussing and proposing a few models that could improve the effectiveness of community forestry in the DRC. (Résumé d'auteur

Issues for impact evaluation design of FSC certification of natural forest management

FSC natural forest management certification has been implemented for >20 years. FSC's goal is to provide a system through which responsible forest management is recognized by consumers and others. Our team works on the design of an empirical theory-based impact evaluation (IE) of the biophysical, social, economic, and policy impacts of this intervention in Brazil, Peru and Indonesia. The range of expected outcomes, and the scales at which impacts ensue, forced us to use inter and trans-disciplinary approaches to define the IE scope and goals. While this research is still ongoing, our goal is to share lessons learned in tackling the complexity of the social-ecological systems where the FSC intervention occurs. We present ideas that see evaluation as a knowledge-generating process as well as a goal in itself. Thus, we introduce the rationale for a multi-stakeholder platform to assure the IE design would be built upon discussions with a range of social actors on the value of this knowledge-generation research to improve their conservation practice. We introduce a conceptual framework that lays out the foundation for the IE work, tightly linked to relevant concepts for conservation biologists such as adaptive management and systems thinking. We discuss results of preparatory studies that provide information used as a backbone for the IE design and that attempts, from the different angles where conservation trade-offs occur, to provide a roadmap for the IE. Studies include a descriptive analysis of auditing and accreditation activities aimed at providing transparency and accountability to the audit component behind certification. We developed country-based studies of political economy factors that underlie historical issues regarding forested lands use and analyze these issues across countries. We ground on these quantitative and qualitative studies hypotheses on how forest management decisions in general and FSC certification in particular, have occurred

Les défis de la redistribution des bénéfices monétaires tirés de la forêt pour les administrations locales : Une décennie de redevance forestière assise sur la superficie du titre d'exploitation au Cameroun

Le cadre de réglementation camerounais sur les forêts, la faune et la pêche oblige les exploitants forestiers à payer une redevance forestière (RF), dont la moitié doit être reversée aux communes rurales (40 %) et aux villages riverains (10 %) des concessions forestières. La RF a pour objectifs principaux d'apporter des contributions régulières au budget de l'État et d'améliorer les moyens d'existence en milieu rural, par le biais d'une redistribution équitable et efficace des bénéfices tirés de la forêt. Après une décennie de mise en oeuvre et la redistribution d'environ 85 millions € à une cinquantaine de communes, les avis dont font état les publications sont unanimes pour dire que les impacts sur les moyens d'existence de la distribution de la RF aux communautés sont faibles. Les évaluations exhaustives des impacts de la redistribution de la RF sur les administrations locales sont moins nombreuses. Cet article examine si la RF peut être un outil de développement local par le biais des autorités locales (les communes), en accordant une attention particulière aux aspects économiques, ainsi qu'aux aspects liés à l'équité et à la gouvernance. Une des conclusions les plus importantes est que les maires, bien qu'ils soient élus et unanimement accusés de détournements de fonds et de mauvaise gestion de la RF, ne sont bien souvent que des boucs émissaires dans un système politique complexe qui ne permet pas à la population rurale de sanctionner directement les utilisations abusives de la RF par l'intermédiaire du système électoral actuel. (Résumé d'auteur

Efficiency of charcoal production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Solutions beyond the kiln

With charcoal set to remain an important energy source throughout Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the foreseeable future, this paper focuses on improving the efficiency of carbonisation as one contribution to more sustainable charcoal value chains. While the efficiency of wood-to-charcoal conversion is often considered a technical matter of kiln performance, this study aims to shed light on the role of the enabling institutional context and the capacities of the players involved. We first review initiatives for enhanced charcoal production in different SSA countries. We then compare the data on carbonisation processes in two production areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Yangambi and the Bateke Plateau. The main findings are: 1) Large gains in wood-to-charcoal conversion rates are possible by improving carbonisation techniques, but success largely depends on the context-specific appropriateness of kiln solutions, on the capacity and awareness of producers and on the enabling institutional context. 2) Enhancing capacity among operators and other stakeholders requires efficient kiln techniques, but also raising awareness on benefits and sustainable sourcing options, building financial and management skills among producer organisations and improving transportation, handling and marketing. 3) The illegal or informal status of charcoal producers across SSA detracts from the efficiency of charcoal production processes, while an enabling institutional framework facilitates producers' access to permits and funding, provides for simple taxation with incentives for more sustainable practices and links technical requirements for carbonisation to sustainable sourcing and end-uses. The success or failure of improved kiln techniques and related socio-ecological outcomes is co-determined by solutions that include the aspects of capacity enhancement, acceptability and enabling institutions identified in this paper. Further development of these solutions in partnership with producers enhances the potential for more sustainable fuelwood value chains