The Monte Alen–Monts De Cristal Landscape

Typical scene from the MA–MC landscape Populations The two main ethnic groups in the landscape are the Fang, who live primarily in mountainous areas, and the Ndowe, in the coastal basin in Equatorial Guinea. The Beyele pygmies, who used to live in the Altos de Nsork area, moved to southern Cameroon and other areas of the forest two decades ago. According to the most recent available statistics (2006), the average population density is 16–18 inhabitants/ km2 on the Equatoguinean side and 0.6 inhabitants/km2 on the Gabonese side.


Introduction
The Monte Alén-Monts de Cristal (MA-MC) landscape covers 26 747 km 2 , nearly half of which is in the northwest of Gabon with the remainder in the southeast of Equatorial Guinea.It is made up of three ecoregions: Atlantic Congolese forest ecoregion, the central West equatorial coastal ecoregion and the southwest equatorial coastal ecoregion.
The landscape occupies a plateau and mountain ranges.Annual rainfall ranges from 2000 mm in the east to 2800 mm in the west.There is a period of drought between July and September that is greatly softened by the presence of low cloud cover over a substantial area.
Overall, the forest concessions cover 65% of the area, the protected areas cover 18%, with 27% of these protected areas in Equatorial Guinea; only 3% of the area is used for agriculture.On the Gabonese side, two hydroelectric dams have been built in the Mbé Valley to supply the capital city, Libreville (Devers and Vande weghe 2007).

Populations
The two main ethnic groups in the landscape are the Fang, who live primarily in mountainous areas, and the Ndowe, in the coastal basin in Equatorial Guinea.The Beyele pygmies, who used to live in the Altos de Nsork area, moved to southern Cameroon and other areas of the forest two decades ago.According to the most recent available statistics (2006), the average population density is 16-18 inhabitants/ km 2 on the Equatoguinean side and 0.6 inhabitants/km 2 on the Gabonese side.

Forest coverage
Forest covers 26 101 km 2 of the MA-MC landscape (de Wasseige and Devers 2009), in which vegetation is very diverse and rich.The main types of landscape are humid lowland forest, degraded humid lowland forest, mountainous forest, degraded mountainous forest, secondary forest and savannah, as well as small extension of abandoned gaboon forest.

Deforestation
Deforestation is a major threat to the landscape.Between 1990 and 2000, 128 km 2 of forest, or 0.49% of the total, was lost (de Wasseige and Devers 2009).Although some of this deforestation is attributable to agricultural activities, mainly subsistence agriculture, the main driver is industrial exploitation of the timber by forest companies and small-scale exploitation of wood for handicrafts and energy needs.

Biodiversity
The MA-MC landscape is characterised by exceptionally rich biodiversity, featuring:

Threats to biodiversity conservation
The main threats to biodiversity in the landscape are: Bushmeat for sale in a village

Land administration and land use
The following land use types are present in the landscape.

Institutional partners
The main institutional partners working in the MA-MC landscape are:

Opportunities, adaptation and REDD+
The following characteristics of the landscape are of relevance to adaptation and REDD+ activities.

Following
are the main threats to the MA-MC landscape.• Local people have little involvement in landscape management and conservation, particularly in protected areas, making it difficult to engage them in communitybased adaptation and mitigation activities based on natural resources management.• Multiple organisations and projects are operating in the landscape on an individual basis.A major challenge is to coordinate various activities and organisations effectively, in order to achieve synergistic results and consistent interventions, and hence improve adaptive capacity.• A cause of conflict is the lack of clear and fixed national borders in the MA-MC landscape.Having clear borders between the two countries will help avoid misunderstandings and lead to better management of the landscape and its reserves and parks.• Local people's lack of awareness of existing laws and regulations and companies' failure to comply with these laws lead to abusive exploitation of resources, by both groups, thus hampering the success of adaptation and mitigation interventions.

based natural resource management areas
• Monts de Cristal National Park in Gabon, which spans 120 000 ha is largely inaccessible to humans because of its dense river forests, widely variable topography (elevation ranges from 200 to 900 metres) and constant mists and cloud cover.Consequently, it is almost virgin territory., namely the Kougouleu-Medouneu-Mbéarea, Equatorial Guinea National Forest and the Abanga River area; and • Three areas for natural resource extraction, namely Lonmin, the Société équatoriale d'exploitation forestière (SEEF) and Rougier.
Devers, D. and J.P. Vande weghe (eds).2007.The forests of the Congo Basin -state of the forest 2006.Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.de Wasseige, C. and D. Devers (eds).2009.The forests of the Congo Basin -state of the forest 2008.Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.de Wasseige, C. and D. Devers (eds).2011.The forests of the Congo Basin -state of the forest 2010.Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.