Socio-economics of Using Poles for Constructing Houses in the Congo Basin

Increasingly, poor people in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by three dimensions of poverty, these being hunger, thirst and living without a decent shelter. This study focused on the latter dimension of poverty and examined the use of housing materials in villages surrounding the Lobeke National Park (LNP) in the Eastern Region of Cameroon. In total 1980 houses were surveyed, of which 1343, 602, 19, 14 and 2 were built with planks, saplings and poles, tree bark and thatch, respectively. The houses were roofed with thatch (1715), aluminum sheets (225) or leaves (40). Variations were observed among ethnic groups regarding their preferences for housing materials. Further analysis concentrated on houses built with poles harvested from indigenous forests. There were six categories of houses built with varying quantities of poles and thatch. Villagers used between 370 000 and 614 000 poles (58-97 times more than the number of trees cut for timber in 2006) to build houses in 14 villages surrounding the LNP. This is particularly destructive because such houses are short-lived, requiring a repetitive harvesting of poles for renovations every 5-15 years. With the removal of poles by adjoining villagers, the structure of indigenous forests and composition can be seriously changed, thus, compromising the possibility of supply future forest goods and services. Therefore, following a rapidly increasing population, there is an urgent need to empower local communities to improve their housing habits by promoting building materials alternative to poles harvested from indigenous forests

African Farm/Family Forestry and Producer Organizations for improved livelihoods and sustainable landscape management

The paper tries to provide answers to questions on the status of farm/family forestry in Africa in terms of opportunities and challenges, their contribution to economic development and sustainable landscape management. In the paper, highlights are made on issues related to land tenure, institutional settings and other supporting policies. In addition, market access and factors that may influence the development of forest products value chains are discussed alongside the possibilities for promoting and strengthening cohesive actions amongst FFPOs in different countries and regions. Answers are provided on questions related to easiness to group formation and registration and their product base. Examples of such groups in terms of associations or federations at local, national and regional levels alongside some examples are briefly described. Information on how FFPOs are currently helping forestry farmers are provided with some examples clearly started including their future potentials and/or pitfalls. At the end of the paper, the outlook in the coming 5 to 10 years for the main opportunities and challenges awaiting farm/family forestry and related FFPOs in Africa are pinpointed

Economic sustainability of national parks in the Congo Basin : a case study of the Sangha Tri-national Park

The second largest complex of tropical rain forest is located in the Congo Basin. This forest is renowned for its biodiversity, harbouring thousands of rare species of plants and animals and providing environmental services at a global level. At the same time these forests are of critical importance to the people of the region. The local economies depend on timber harvesting, while the forest dwellers support their subsistence with forest products on daily basis. The dilema faced by policy makers, conservationists and the local communities is in merging the various ideals, objectives and needs at a local, national and global level in order to sustain the forests, their fauna and the people. Examples from Southern and Eastern Africa have shown that, with the right management in place, natural ecosystems managed jointly for ecotourism, conservation and recreation, can yield appreciable benfits at minimum environmental destruction. Therefore it is believed that well-organized tourism can become the best way to use the Congo Basin’s forests for creating economic opportunities without destroying the resources. The challenge therefore, is in convincing decision-makers that conservation of forests can provide for sustainable economic development. However in the Congo Basin this potential has not been demonstrated thus far. Deliberate policy initiatives to cost recovery, profit making or generation of local business are woefully lacking. Not only are the protected forests maintained with marginal funds, but the management systems in place are also ineffective, especially regarding poor financial management resulting in losses of 2/3 of the expected revenue. The centralized collection and distribution of funding by government agencies prevents local initiatives from achieving financial sustainability. It also remains unclear how the fees paid by tourists visiting the parks are related to the operational costs and if these fee structures do in fact approximate tourists’ willingness-to-pay (WTP). In this study the factors of (i) tourists’ WTP higher entrance fees and (ii) duration of stay, were evaluated in two protected areas of the 28000 km2 Sangha Tri-National Park shared by Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. It was found that if park facilities were improved the potential entry fee in the Lobeke National Park could be increased by an additional US$10 per visitor. At the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park, foreign, resident and national tourists could be paying an additional US$ 30, 20 and 7, respectively. To this end improvements in park facilities, efficiency in entrance fee setting and management structures are recommended

Effects of credit constraints on the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises in Cameroon

This paper assesses the determinants and effects of credit constraints on the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cameroon. Use is made of the Cameroon enterprise survey data collected by the World Bank in 2009 and an endogenous switching regression model. Results show that interest rates, size of enterprise, size of loan, size of collateral, maturity of loans and legal status of enterprises are major sources of credit constraints faced by SMEs. Results also indicate that medium enterprises are more credit constrained than small enterprises; meanwhile the effects of credit constraints affect small enterprises more than medium enterprises. Credit constrained firms have lower levels of productivity relative to unconstrained firms. These results have implications for the creation of credit bureaux, prudential stringency and rationalization of the Cameroon tax system

Ecotourism for sustainable development : economic valuation of recreational potentials of protected areas in the Congo Basin.

This study was designed to capture the complexity of man-to-forest relationships in the endangered, world-renowned tropical rain forests of the Congo Basin in Africa. Their biological complexity and integrity have been challenged by human development and new knowledge is urgently needed to save these forests and the people dependent on them. The scope of the study was enormous because of the complexity of the resource, the diversity of forest-dependent people and actors. The major benefit of this research was in accessing and exposing new and quantitative information in remote settlements of the region by applying innovative methodologies and analytical techniques. These included: 1. The definition of forest-dependency based on detailed annual inventories of sources of households’ incomes, their statistical ranking and interpretation with logistic regressions, and the Kuznets ratio and Gini coefficients as introduced by the World Bank; 2. critical appraisal of the international parks in the region based on auto-financing principles and tested with contingent valuation and tax maximization techniques, such as Laffer’s curves, and leading to the development of new conservation models of financial self-sufficiency and a new formula for practical park management; 3. the critique of poaching by explaining and exposing food insecurities, especially deficient supplies of animal protein and associated malnutrition among the rural poor; 4. assessment of housing inadequacy among forest dwellers and its impact on forest regeneration and resources; 5. clarification of the impacts of timber logging by accessing detailed unpublished information from timber companies; 6. the introduction of survey-based valuation techniques as essential prerequisites to policy formulation and the sustainable management of forests; 7. proposing a flow chart that embraced the resources and stakeholders through the flow of market values and services for further exploration. Contrary to traditional beliefs; the results showed that both poor and wealthy households are equally dependent on forest resources for their livelihoods with no significant difference in consumed forest products between the 25% higher income earners and the 25% lower income households. Forests contribute over 57% of wage income in the region and forest-derived income is of a higher total value than any other source, including agriculture. Among forest foods, wild fruit and bushmeat are by far the most important. Therefore, the clearing of forests for agriculture or instituting conservation policies that completely keep local people away from forests will result in constrained access to resources of immense importance to local livelihoods. However, the findings contradict the commonly propagated views that timber harvesting in the region is directly responsible for deforestation, the loss of forest structure and biodiversity. It was shown that the harvesting of saplings and poles for housing may endanger forest regeneration and species composition of forests neighbouring the villages. The desired financing of national parks should be through internally generated revenues, requiring deliberate investments in facilities and infrastructure. The necessity to satisfy the basic needs of the forest-dependent people remains urgent. The complexity of man-to-forest relationships is beyond one study and needs to be further expanded on, in our quest to sustainable forest management based on participatory principles. Such management needs to provide for and be supported by various stakeholders including the local communities, state agencies, donors, NGOs, and commercial conglomerates. Moreover, the need to understand forest values beyond market principles is required in order to translate the concept of sustainable forest management from a theoretical concept in the Congo Basin to one that can reduce conflicts, deforestation, poverty and famine.Thesis (PhD.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008

The role of forest resources in income inequality in Cameroon

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Composite structures journal «National Geographic Ukraine»: compliance with existing norms

У статті з’ясовуються особливості системи рубрикації у науково-популярному журналі «National Geographic. Україна». Досліджуються переваги та недоліки, прийоми та засоби рубрикації. Аналізуються особливості видання та їх вплив на графічне, композиційне та смислове виконання рубрик.This article presents aspects of editorial classification systems of «National Geographic. Ukraine» popular science journal. Benefits and drawbacks, methods and tools of editorial classification are explored here. Author analyzes edition features, their influence on visual, compositional and semantic composition of sections

Nutrient and bioactive analyses of forests foods for policy making on food and nutrition security in Central Africa

A serious public health challenge may be envisaged in central Africa, especially with a growing population, rapid westernization of traditional African diets and increasing demand for sufficient essential nutrients and bioactive compounds. However, having the second largest tropical rainforest basin in the world, forest foods that are widely consumed in Central Africa contain adequate essential nutrients such as carotenoids, flavonoids, proanthocyanins, polyphenols, vitamins C and E, Fe, Se, Ca and Na. This review purports that forest foods can considerably contribute towards meeting human nutrient requirements by replacing imported western foods that are generally more expensive and lower in essential nutrients. We recommend that forest foods should be considered in setting nutrition education strategies and formulating policies governing food and nutrition security in Central Africa