Issue Brief #17

This Briefing Sheet was written by Michael Brown of Innovative Resources Management. For further information contact Michael Brown, email: brown1irm@aol.com.

The Status of Local Forest Tenure Rights in the Congo Basin

From the colonial period to the present, Congo Basin states have enjoyed full ownership of forest resources, and remain the sole authority, with rights to alienate resources for conservation and/or development purposes. Local communities retain different traditional claims, but these do not confer legal property rights.

While communities have only use rights, they often perceive that they bear ownership rights based on historical use, supported by oral histories of origin and occupancy. And while state rhetoric often appears supportive of community claims to tenure for restricted use purposes, in practice, Congo Basin communities remain as marginalized by forest estate zoning as they were during the colonial era.

Communities often find their subsistence and traditional forest use lifestyles are in direct opposition to the official state zoning of the forest estate. This has been documented through CARPE's work with participatory mapping where several communities clearly documented their use of the forest conflicted with its official zoning.

Equity and Reality — Just What Can Communities Expect?

In Cameroon, according to Decree 95/678/PM, the state is the principal legal owner of the forest estate. New community forest legislation has created a legal precedent for increasing community control over forest resource use and promoting greater equity in forest based revenue sharing. However, even so-called community forests are still owned by the state, with communities simply assuring the management of the forest based on an agreement with the State. The State has the right to break the agreement if it feels the agreement it is not being respected. The status of the community forest is therefore reduced to a kind of contractual rental arrangement.

There are two current tendencies on the part of communities regarding capitalizing on community forest legislation. The strongest tendency is to be expedient and collaborate with logging interests, thereby producing short-term rents for communities. This invites external agents into community forests. The second tendency (to date much weaker in Cameroon) is to formalize community forest agreements. This takes lots of work, and communities are often unaware of how exactly to go about the process, or find the process too overwhelming and abandon the effort. The table below illustrates the current situation.

Thus, while the intent of 1,000 CFA tax was to contribute to decentralized benefit sharing, to date local elites in power at the commune and village level have primarily benefited. Logging interests have also benefited, as illegal logging has expanded through support of corruptible local interests. Furthermore, the reason why local populations have become keenly interested in the rent produced by this tax is because they perceive that the government's Plan de Zonage reflects a definitive delimitation of forest use zones, rather than a basis for negotiation of new agreements.

Management Realities — Are Communities Better Potential Allies to Biodiversity Conservation than Logging Companies?

CIRAD-Forêt has recently evaluated the [in]effectiveness of current fiscal measures to promote sustainable forest management in Cameroon. They conclude that dysfunctionality in forest management is leading to comprehensive abuse at all levels. Given current evidence, the argument cannot persuasively be made that forest conservation is better promoted through a private sector approach encouraging widespread timber extraction versus a community-based approach. Conversely, comprehensive data do not exist to prove that communities can manage forests sustainably. Most practitioners agree, however, based on experience and limited empirical data, that a significant degree of community participation is fundamental to good management. The nature and intensity of community participation in achieving conservation results under specific circumstances is the subject of much research. Ultimately, multi-stakeholder coalitions in which communities have an enhanced role in collaborative forest management may become the norm.

Community level forest management is also influenced by multipurpose use objectives of the forest resource. Community level management is influenced by social networks, occurrence of sacred sites, functional area location within walking distance to villages, risk minimization behaviors, patrimonial common property systems that go largely unrecognized by state entities, as well as land claiming strategies through mise en valeur land improvement/development strategies.

Many factors affect how communities participate. Results from the Biodiversity Support Program's study on decentralization and biodiversity conservation established that the clarity of goals, equity of participation and creation of alliances, incentives, policies, awareness and capacity all are crucial to shaping the impact of decentralized management arrangements. Thus, decentralized management alone will not bare results if incentives, alliances and capacities are not appropriately developed.

How Much Responsibility Can Communities Actually Assume Given Existing Capacities?

• Communities have significant long-term incentives for forest conservation that external agencies do not have, potentially lowering certain categories of transaction costs over the long-termHowever, this potential will remain largely theoretical as long as "perverse incentives" to unsustainable forest management practices remain the rule.

• Realizing community management potential will require capacity building in strategic planning, administration, participatory forest resource monitoring and evaluation, participatory mapping, and negotiation.

• The overall political and macroeconomic situation in the Congo Basin limits communities' abilities to
  generate the social and economic capital to achieve sustainable management of forest resources. That said, capacity comes with power if communities had legal powers, social and financial capital would flow to them.

• External change agents with forest conservation and participatory development agendas can help expand communities' role in management to create win-win scenarios for conservation and development. CARPE through IRM's work has this objective. WCS's Banyang-Mbo project is premised on the integral role communities play in forest management.

• Many structural problems nonetheless militate against community involvement. These include: isolation of many rural communities, the fact the elites are often distrusted by village people, the lack of institutions that really speak for local communities, and the lack of national and local political space for action.

  Multi-stakeholder coalitions that promote collaborative management formats may help secure communites' role in the Congo Basin forest management.

For More Information

Technical Reports

Abbot, J., F. G. Ananze, N. Barning, P. Burnham, E. de Merode, A. Dunn, E. Fuchi, E. Hakizumwami, C. Hesse, R. Mwinyihali, M. Mahaman Sani, D. Thomas, P. Trench, R. and Tshombe. 2000. "Promoting partnerships: Managing wildlife resources in Central and West Africa." Evaluating Eden Series No. 3, 194 pp. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.

Hackel, J. D. 1999. "Community conservation and the future of Africa's wildlife." Conservation Biology 13:726-734.

Ostrom, E. "Self-governance and forest resources." 1999. Occasional Paper No. 20, 15 pp. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Wild, R. G. and J. Mutebi. 1996. "Conservation through community use of plant resources: Establishing collaborative management at Bwindi Impenetrable and Mgahinga Gorilla National Parks, Uganda." Working Paper, Peoples and Plants 5:47 Paris: UNESCO.

CARPE...What Is It?

Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE)

Launched in 1995, the Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) engages African NGOs, research and educational organizations, private-sector consultants, and government agencies in evaluating threats to forest integrity in the Congo Basin and in identifying opportunities to sustainably manage the region’s vast forests for the benefit of Africans and the world. CARPE’s members are helping to provide African decision makers with the information they will need to make well-informed choices about forest use in the future. BSP has assumed the role of "air traffic controller" for CARPE’s African partners. Participating countries include Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and São Tomé e Principe.

Web site:
http://carpe.umd.edu

The Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) is a consortium of World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and World Resources Institute, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This publication was made possible through support provided to BSP by the Africa Bureau of USAID, under the terms of Cooperative Agreement Number AOT-A-00-99-00228-00. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID.

Biodiversity Support Program
1250 24th St., NW
Washington, DC 20037
Tel: 202-861-8347
Fax: 202-861-8324
E-Mail: BSP@wwfus.org
Web: www.BSPonline.org

For the Congo Basin Information Series © 2001 by WWF. WWF authorizes, without its prior permission, reproduction for educational and other noncommercial purposes of the portions of this publication to which it holds the copyright. However, it does request advance written notification and appropriate acknowledgment. WWF does not require payment for the noncommercial use of its published works. Photographs used by permission of the photographers (Richard Carroll, Djoum Community). For information on copyright in the text of this Issue Brief, contact the writer identified at the beginning of this document.