A Critical Appraisal of Government Forestry Policy in View of Forest Sustainability in Cameroon - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 183

16 A Critical Appraisal of Government Forestry
Policy in View of Forest Sustainability
in Cameroon
Victor N. Cheo 1 , Balgah Sounders Nguh 2 , Adeline A. Awemo 3 and Wolfgang
Schluchter 1
1 Chair of Environmental Issues in the Social Sciences, Brandenburg University
of Technology (BTU), Cottbus, Germany
2 Department of Geography University of Buea, Cameroon
3 Chair of Environmental Geology, Brandenburg University of Technology
(BTU), Cottbus, Germany
16.1 Introduction
The economic crises of the mid 1980s and 90s inflicted serious negative conse-
quences on Cameroon's forest ecosystems and forest resources, as they became
the target of intense exploitation for multiple purposes. A rapidly increasing popu-
lation, coupled with poor economic performance exacerbated the over-exploitation
of forests, imposing stresses on forest biological resources for agricultural lands,
urbanization, fuelwood, food and shelter. Furthermore, the presence of timber
companies and small local traders in timber products accelerated unsustainable
forest management practices in Cameroon.
The contribution of forestry to Cameroon's national economy is significant.
Timber alone accounted for 10% of the GNP, and generates about 6.4 million US
dollars annually. Roughly 55,000 people are employed directly or indirectly in this
sector (Ndenecho 2005). Forestry makes a major contribution to export receipts
with timber accounting for about 28% of total export earnings, making it the sec-
ond most important source of foreign exchange after petroleum (47%). This figure
excludes the considerable revenue lost to illegal logging each year (DFID 2002).
Cameroon's forests are a major source of the world's tropical timber. A forest
policy reform in the early 90s, at the behest of the World Bank was intended to
regulate forest exploitation in a sustainable way. This chapter, through a three-tier
methodological approach of a survey, content analysis and observation, aims at
appraising the potential of the current forest policy to significantly mitigate, on
long term basis, non-sustainable forest exploitation. A breakdown of the chapter
composition is as follows: section 16.2 presents the problem statement and main
objective of the paper, while section 16.3 focuses on the methodological approach.
Section 16.4 evokes the evolution of forest administration and policy in Cameroon