Chapter V. Institutional and Organizational Capacity

A. National level

In 1993, AWF, WWF, and WCS conducted a review of protected-area management capacity in the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Cameroon, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire). The focus of the review was primarily on the training needs of protected-area managers; little information was reported on the resource management capacity of the responsible ministries and institutes.

Rather than attempt to characterize the natural resource management capacity of each nation within Central Africa, it is more appropriate here to simply examine the single, arguably representative case of the Central African Republic. The Ministry of Environment, Water, Forests, Hunting, and Fishing is responsible for the management of all Central African Republic forests, rivers, lakes and protected areas. The ministry has 328 employees and an annual salary requirement of US$ 600,000, for which the government budgeted a mere US$ 71,000 in 1999. Worse, only 19 employees are assigned to field-based positions. The country has more than 62,000 square kilometers of protected areas, with each manager therefore responsible for regulating natural resource use in an area of more than 3,200 square kilometers. That area of responsibility would increase tenfold if the country’s entire land area were to be included. The ministry owns only five vehicles, all of which are stationed in the capital, Bangui, meaning the field stuff must police their area on foot. Realistically, the Central African Republic has negligible capacity to control access to and regulate the use of natural resources within its protected areas, forest reserves, and lived-in landscapes. Even if all 328 ministry employees were stationed in field positions they would be unable to cover the required area on foot, and with annual salaries of less than US$ 220 they would in any case be easy targets for bribery.

Each country in Central Africa has its own resource management capacity challenges, but the case of the Central African Republic is not qualitatively different to that of any other country. Gabon’s wildlife agency, for example, has only 13 staff members for a country half the size of France. In the Republic of Congo, the Ministry of Economic Forestry, Fishing, and Fisheries employs 722 people, but having lost all of its vehicles, radios, and computer equipment in the civil war has little capacity for resource management.

That said, although the absolute economic investment in conservation by Central African governments is extremely low relative to that of nations in the north (Europe and North America), their contribution relative to the size of their national economies is often comparable to that of wealthier nations (Table 9). On average, African nations spend 0.19 percent of their national budget on protected area management—more than twice that of the wealthy European and North American nations, which spend on average only 0.08 percent. In real terms, however, they spend only about US$ 373 per square kilometer of protected area (or US$ 117, if Kenya and South Africa are removed from the equation), compared to the US$ 2,768 spent by the European and North American nations. The pressures of population in some parts of Europe and North America may make protection of certain areas there more expensive, but these figures still suggest that the level of spending on protected areas in most of Africa is inadequate (Bell and Clarke 1984; Leader-Williams and Albon 1988).

A recent study in Cameroon by Culverwell (1998) provides the only detailed accounting of protected area management costs and financing within the Congo Basin. Cameroon has 14 protected areas, covering 20,644 square kilometers, and has proposals in place that would extend protected land to 42,574 square kilometers, or approximately 9 percent of the country’s landmass. Government expenditures on the present protected area network in 1996 were US$ 143,325, or 0.01 percent of Cameroon’s annual budget of US$ 1.2 billion. In terms of the percentage of government budget devoted to protected areas, Cameroon is near the bottom of the global league table: Bangladesh also invests 0.01 percent of budget in protected areas, India 0.03 percent, Papua New Guinea 0.09 percent, and Bhutan 0.29 percent, for example (Braatz et al. 1992) (see Table 9 for further comparisons). In purchasing power parity terms, Cameroon spends US$ 0.06 per capita on protected areas, compared to US$ 7.40 per capita in the United States. Even controlling for differences in per capita GNP, Cameroon spends proportionally less on protected area management than does the United States. A comparison made by Culverwell of actual spending on three of Cameroon’s 14 protected areas found that average government investment in protected area management since 1986 covered less than 20 percent of required operating costs (Culverwell 1998).

Source: James et al. (1997); ART (1998); CIA (1992).

With the devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994, Cameroon government spending on protected areas has fallen in dollar terms by 50 percent since 1993. In 1996, spending on all protected areas ranged from zero to US$ 9.00 per hectare per year (US$ 9.00/ha/yr), with a median of US$ 0.12/ha/yr. This compares poorly with the spending in other regions, such as Germany (US$ 8/ha/yr), the Netherlands (US$ 56/ha/yr), the United States (US$ 19/ha/yr), Kenya (US$ 27/ha/yr), and the private Monteverde reserve in Costa Rica (US$ 12/ha/yr) (Aylward et al. 1996). Culverwell (1998) estimates that the current protected area system requires US$ 1,901,874 per year to effectively cover all recurring costs, with the proposed expansion of the protected area system raising recurring costs to more than US$ 2.9 million per year. To achieve this, Cameroon would need to increase its per capita investment 20-fold, to 0.25 percent of its annual budget, a proportion equivalent to that of Canada.

B. Regional level

At least two regional-scale organizations exist in Central Africa that are concerned with natural resources management. The first is CEFDHAC, a ministerial-level organization supported in part by IUCN. The second is the CITES Bushmeat working group, established at the April 2000 CITES meeting in Nairobi.

CEFDHAC was established in 1996, and has since held three major meetings to strengthen and facilitate regional cooperation between Central African countries in the conservation and sustainable use of moist-forest ecosystems. CEFDHAC has commissioned and undertaken several projects, including the following:

• A comparative study of the forest laws and policies of five Central African states (Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Rwanda) that is now in press.
• Identification of critical sites for biodiversity conservation.
• Development, in collaboration with the Interafrican Forest Industries Association (IFIA), of a code of conduct for the sustainable use of forest concessions. Once approved, this code of conduct will be signed by IFIA members, who will be bound to respect and promote it throughout their profession.
• A study on timber taxes and concession fees in the region.

CEFDHAC has also recently published a draft of its strategic action plan for natural resource conservation in the region. If formally adopted by the participating nations, this document will help guide the future transboundary resource management policies and practices of CEFDHAC members.

The CITES Bushmeat working group has established representation by each nation in Central Africa, and is in the process of developing a plan of action.

C. Role of international organizations

At present, international donors and NGOs are primarily responsible for the financial and technical management of resource conservation activities within Central Africa. They are supported in this by a growing cadre of young social and biological scientists from around the region, who are increasingly playing key roles in resource conservation projects throughout Central Africa.