Improving Decentralized Forest Management in Cameroon: Options and Opportunities from Ten Years of Experience

(1) outlines recommendations for change and improvement;(2) describes the legal and institutional infrastructure of decentralized forest management in Cameroon; (3) describes how basic mechanisms of decentralized forest management operate in practice; and (4) summarizes the findings of five years of World Resources Institute (WRI)-Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) research on decentralized forestry policy and practice. The decentralization of forestry management in Cameroon has succeeded in providing powers to local actors and enabling them to establish community forests, council forests and community-managed hunting zones, and to have access to forestry fees. The impacts of this transfer of power on local democracy, equity, living standards, poverty alleviation, social vulnerability and environmental sustainability are, however, weak. There is enormous room for improvement. This brief formulates recommendations with a view to transforming the promise of decentralized forest management in Cameroon into action and positive outcomes on the ground, notably poverty reduction.


Recommendations
♦ To increase accountability in the management of and investment in wildlife and community forest revenue, monitoring and evaluation indicators must be developed and applied.Such indicators are currently being developed.
• Researchers, NGOs/projects, social networks, decision makers, local elected representatives and village communities.
♦ To curb corruption and widespread embezzlement in the redistribution and use of forest-based revenue, tangible legal proceedings and administrative and legal sanctions are needed.This can be done through: (i) the signing of 'Prefectoral' Orders defining tangible sanctions against embezzlement in the local management of community forests and wildlife revenue; (ii) the dismissal of regional administrative authorities involved in embezzlement; and (iii) the full involvement of the courts so that legal proceedings and sanctions are applied.♦ To curb corruption and widespread embezzlement in the management of forest-based revenue, codes of conduct for management committee members must designed at village and council levels.
• NGOs/projects, social networks and local communities.
♦ To enable local discretion over forest-based fund management, mechanisms must be set up for the direct transfer, in cash, of the 10% of annual forestry fees earmarked for forest-edge village communities.This can be done through a series of policy meetings aimed at the signing of a new MINEFI (Ministère des Finances)/MINEDAT (Ministère de l'Administration Territoriale) Joint Order for direct cash transfers and of Municipal Orders relating to the management of council forest revenue.
• Decision makers, mayors, local councillors, donors and parliamentarians (as a pressure group).
♦ To promote downward accountability and local democracy, appropriate social methodologies and democratic procedures are required to govern the choice and constitution of management committees effectively.
• NGOs and social/policy researchers.
♦ To enhance equitable and efficient local reinvestment of wildlife income, management committees must be granted full and independent powers to manage revenue allocated to forest-edge village communities.This can be done through the Signing of a Joint Ministerial Order (Ministry in Charge of Forests -(MINFOF)/MINEFI) giving full powers to the Comités de Valorisation des Ressources Fauniques (COVAREFs) for the management of this revenue, without interference by officials of MINFOF or administrative and council authorities.
• Decision makers, donors and parliamentarians (as a pressure group).

♦ To empower local communities in forested
Cameroon, the principle of an Equalization Fund for forest-based revenue -intended as a nation-wide redistribution of annual forestry fees -must be revised, since it is rejected by forest-edge communities and rural councils.along with subsequent legal and administrative instruments, constituted a major policy shift.
Cameroon has a vast forested domain.Out of a total surface area of 47.5 million ha, dense rainforest occupies 23.9 million ha, 17 million ha of which are exploitable for logging.At the end of the 1990s, the country plunged into a severe economic crisis characterized by the weakening of the urban middle classes, the exodus of town dwellers to rural areas, and disruption of rural economies.About 49.6% of the country's 15.8 million inhabitants live in rural areas, where purchasing power dropped significantly and livelihoods were severely disrupted (RoC 2003).Under these conditions, rural communities' concerns for their well-being were increasingly directed at the exploitation of natural resources, especially timber, for revenue that they generate.
Theory indicates that to obtain positive and sustainable policy, political, socioeconomic and environmental outcomes, decentralization in the area of natural resources must be democratic and substantive (Manor 1999;Ribot 2003Ribot , 2005)).undertaken over the past five years by the CIFOR-WRI team.These observations and empirical work are the basis of the recommendations outlined above.

The Structure of Cameroon's Forest Management Decentralization
The provisions of the 1994 Forestry Law establish forestry, wildlife and fisheries regulations.Its Application Decree details the modes of implementation (RoC 1995).These tools, along with subsequent orders and circulars, form the legal bases for the decentralized management of Cameroon's forests.As a whole, these forestry reforms have three objectives: (i) to promote community participation in forest management; (ii) to contribute to poverty reduction; and (iii) to contribute to sustainable forest resources management.These reforms establish four basic mechanisms that are the foundations of decentralized forest management in Cameroon: (i) council forests; (ii) community forests; (iii) annual forestry fees; and (iv) community-managed hunting zones.

Council Forests
A council forest 'is any forest that has been classified and assigned to a council concerned or that was planted by the council on council land' (RoC 1994).
Constitutional reforms in 1996 establish the 'council' as the basic decentralized territorial unit.The 1994 Forestry Law and its Application Decree transfer to these entities ownership rights over the biophysical unit within their jurisdiction (the council forest) and over the financial benefits accruing from the exploitation of its forest products, including timber (RoC 1994(RoC , 1995)).

Community Forests
The A significant innovation in favour of local populations, which encourages the creation of community forests, appeared in the wake of the law.This is the pre-emption right, which institutes the priority attribution of any forest likely to be established as a community forest to the neighbouring village communities.The objective of this prescription is to give priority to village communities, rather than logging companies, when a forest may be allocated under a vente de coupe -a sale of standing volume in small logging units of less than 2500 ha (MINEF 2001).

Annual Forestry Fees
Though provided for under the 1994 Forestry Law, the allocation of annual forestry fees by logging companies was not implemented until fiscal year 1996/1997.The annual forestry fee 'comprises two elements, an access right calculated from a minimum rate of 300 CFA francs per hectare per year and an exploitation right calculated by logging area for the duration of the latter [….]The product of these fees is distributed as follows: 50% to the central State, 40% to rural councils in whose domains the exploited forests are located, and 10% to neighboring villages' (RoC 1996).
This Article of the Finance Law was changed in fiscal year 1997/1998 and the fees were fixed as follows: ventes de coupe, 2500 CFA francs per hectare; concessions, 1500 CFA francs per hectare; and permits, 1500 CFA francs per hectare.The Finance Law for fiscal year 2000/2001 then lowered the minimum fee for concessions to a rate of 1000 CFA francs per hectare.Annual Forestry fees are paid by certified cheque, and function as, inter alia, a kind of 'eco tax' derived from the 'polluter pays' principle -that is, financial compensation paid to repair the damage caused by industrial forestry development.

Community-managed Hunting Zones
The current forestry law makes a brief reference to community hunting areas, but this provision has not actually been put into practice.Nevertheless,

Implementing Decentralized Forest Management
The following section provides an outline of the implementation process for these four decentralization policy options.While the exploitation of community forests and the redistribution of annual forestry fees seem to be the more advanced and scaled-up experiments, the exploitation of ZICGCs, which exist only in the South East, and of communal forests, of which there are only five, remains marginal.

Establishment of Council Forests
In

Community Forest Implementation and Exploitation
The

Allocation of Annual Forestry Fees
To disburse the 50% of annual forestry fees intended for rural councils and forest-edge village communities, the General Department of Taxation issues cheques to the mayors of the localities concerned.Each recipient rural council has a 'regional' management committee chaired by the mayor and composed of local representatives of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, MINFOF, the local Revenue Collector, and representatives of village committees.
Village communities should form village-level forestry fee management committees (MINEFI/ MINEDAT 1998).The 10% of fees intended for these communities is not given to them in cash, rather these committees are expected to submit community project proposals to the 'regional' management committee for funding.According to the Forestry Revenue Enhancement Program, during the two fiscal years 2002/3 and 2004, the amounts of annual forestry fees paid to the central State and to councils were 9.2 billion and 10.1 billion CFA francs, respectively.Village communities as a whole were entitled to 1.9 billion CFA francs.The following figure shows total annual forestry fees allocated to selected rural councils and constituent villages during fiscal years 2002/3 and 2004.

Community-managed Hunting Zones
In villages with ZICGCs, COVAREFs are responsible for identifying local development problems, seeking appropriate solutions and ensuring the implementation of all projects of community interest in the villages.A COVAREF may cover one or more villages (Ontcha Mpele et al. 2005).
The revenue managed by COVAREFs is derived mainly from the leasing of the community- managed hunting zones to professional hunting concessionaires, who pay rental or access rights for the period of the lease.Other financial resources are also derived from a portion of fees for: (i) the leasing of professional hunting zones (ZICs) located near the villages; (ii) related felling tax; (iii) capture tax; and (iv) auction sales, damages and interest paid by poachers to the regional forest and wildlife service.
The financial resources of COVAREFs are deposited in accounts at the Post Offices in the nearest towns.This money is accessible to the chairs and treasurers of these committees.The money can, however, be withdrawn only with the approval of an official of the regional forest and wildlife service.
The amount of wildlife revenue in COVAREFs, from 2000 to 2004, ranged from a low of 1.9 million CFA francs (Njombi-Lobo) to a high of 17.3 million (Salokomo).

Research
The To answer these questions, this study identified and monitored the performance of 15 community forest management committees, 1 rural council (for the Dimako Council Forest), 1 council forest management consultative committee, 4 rural councils (for annual forestry fees), and 15 village annual forestry fees management committees.Additional committees were studied through informal visits to other villages.Many different actors in the village communities were consulted in an iterative manner.Decision makers, project managers, municipal councillors, field practitioners, researchers, key and strategic informants, logging operators and strategic groups were interviewed at the central, regional and local levels.The Forestry Law -the Application, in effect -and related orders were reviewed and analyzed.

Security of Transfer
The forestry law transfers, to regional and local entities, rights of ownership over forest units of the permanent and non permanent forest estate and rights of autonomous management of financial benefits derived from their exploitation.Not all of these transfers are secure, however.♦ Of the four mechanisms addressed by the study, the transfer of rights and powers is effective and permanent only in the case of council forests.These powers -the powers to own a council forest, to exploit it and to manage the revenue -are discretionary and rely on the principle of subsidiarity.♦ Powers have been delegated to village communities to establish community forests and for the autonomous management of financial benefits derived from their exploitation.In this case, powers are only delegated because the 1994 Forestry Law states that if a community forest is 'poorly managed' the Ministry in charge of forests will withdraw the managerial powers from the village community concerned.This process of power transfer is conditional and has the effect of making local managers upwardly accountable to the regional officials of MINFOF, thus reducing local freedom in decision making (see Box 2).
BOX 2: Is a community forest a loan?
Cameroon's forestry laws and regulations state that community forest management agreements must be signed for 5-year periods, renewable for a total of 25 years.If the forest is poorly managed -sometimes defined as such only by experts -the management agreement is suspended.This happened in many community forests -including that of Kongo -in 2002 and2003.
It raises the question as to whether community forests actually constitute a transfer of powers, a delegation of powers or a loan granted only under certain conditions.
Source: Oyono et al. (2006) ♦ Decentralized forestry tax revenues are distributed following double standards.Ten per cent of the annual forestry fee revenue is earmarked for forest-edge villages.This 10% is not, however, paid directly to the forest-edge village communities in cash.The communities have very little power over the management of these funds.Instead, in the redistribution process, the funds are retained at the level of municipal (primarily mayors) and administrative authorities.In most cases, local communities are subordinate stakeholders: decision making about socioeconomic amenities to be established at the village level is usurped by municipal and administrative authorities (see Box 3).

Institutional Choice and Constitutional Issues
The choice of management committees as the local institutions receiving powers, and the way in which these local committees are constituted, has resulted in elite capture, conflict and corruption.♦ Although created to undertake the decentralized management of forests and distribution of benefits on behalf of their communities, management committees are actually governed such that external actors The village community therefore called for a general meeting to make a progress report and elect a new bureau -the management body -of the CIG.Not only was there no general meeting, but no meeting had been held there for more than seven months.For more than two years, the executive bureau presented no report.This bureau was accused by the villagers of 'dirigisme' and embezzlement.
Source: Etoungou (2003) ♦ The emergence of 'new local authorities' -members of various village management committees -through institutional change related to decentralization policies is perceived by traditional authorities (lineage heads, elders and chiefs) as a coup d'état.The result is a schism within the village, or institutional dualism, and increased conflict (over power, pre-eminence and other interests), setting the opposing groups against each other and impacting negatively on local management dynamics and livelihoods improvement.

Accountable Representation
In part because of the way in which committees were constituted, village management committee operations are often governed by concerns of upward accountability -to municipal authorities, regional administrative authorities, NGOs, representatives of MINFOF, logging companies etc.
-rather than to village communities.♦ The local management of forests and derived benefits is characterized by the emergence, through management committees, of a local 'environmental elite' -nouveaux riches 'middlemen' -cut off from local populations.They are, however, linked to external elites committed to the capture of community forests -such as regional administrative corporatism, municipal authorities and logging companies -through a combination

BOX 3: The weakness of local actors in the management of annual forestry fees
In the way that management committees currently operate, chaired by mayors or their representatives who are municipal councillors, local village community representatives are mere observers.They do not participate fully in decision making concerning the local management of forestry fees or the implementation of economic, social and cultural amenities in neighbouring village communities.
Most decisions (the types of projects and other undertakings, contractors responsible for carrying out the work, geographical distribution of socioeconomic amenities, amount to be allocated to projects, etc.) are made by mayors.
Source : Bigombé Logo (2003) of financial, social and political interests.This leads to 'externally oriented committees.' ♦ Arrangements initiated around the Dimako Council Forest -by the Consultative Management Committee and the Monitoring Committee -are not conducive to the significant involvement of forest-edge village communities in the decision-making process concerning the management and exploitation of that forest.♦ In some cases, however, the decentralized management of forests and related benefits has generated responsible representation and mobilization around daily concerns.In these cases, positive socioeconomic outcomes have emerged.
(construction of three classrooms, the roof of a chapel and three small health centres).Despite these achievements, with little economic impact and a strong orientation toward sociocultural infrastructure, this mechanism has not stood out as instruments of local governance, socioeconomic transformation or positive change in many of the villages involved.♦ Some of the community-managed hunting zones exploited under lease in the South East region generated revenue that later funded socioeconomic amenities, for a total of about 43 million CFA francs from 2000 to 2004.
According to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Jengui) Project experts, this was spent as follows (Bigombé Logo et al. 2005): 33.27% for the operations of COVAREFs; 18.90% for the construction of COVAREF offices; 14.40% for educational support to students; 8.31% for setting up community farms; 5.18% for village water projects; 6.62% for the purchase of motorbikes; 3.13% for providing material support to the Baka Pygmies; 0.84% for village electrification; 3.10% for housing improvement; and 6.25% for the protection of some community-managed hunting zones.These percentages are marked by the predominance of expenses related to COVAREF operations, which are not easy to assess.♦ The redistribution of annual forestry fees and their conversion, by rural councils, into socioeconomic projects in constituent villages is characterized by overbilling, the declaration of fictitious projects, and embezzlement (Kouna 2001;Bigombé Logo 2003).Whole villages have been excluded from the redistribution process over many years; projects are invoiced at triple their real cost; council revenue and tax collectors impose imaginary taxes on contractors, take abusive deductions (sometimes 20-30%) from payment amounts, and make this a precondition for contracts (see Box 5).The idea of an Equalization Fund, which would -as planned by experts from the Prime Minister's office -recentralize revenues that would then be redistributed to non-forested areas, would only increase corruption and further decrease the benefits due to forest-edge communities.♦ Financial resources generated from the exploitation of community forests are tangible, as this involves selling planks for cash.Concrete socioeconomic results are found in some villages, where housing improvements, classroom repairs, establishment of community oil palm nurseries, well construction, bee keeping, cultural initiatives, etc., can be seen.As shown in Figure 1, annual revenue ranges Small-scale logging of a community forest.

Outcomes and Impact
Although villages have seen some tangible socioeconomic results from forest management decentralization, this is more apparent in mechanisms that generate direct cash benefits for communities.A substantial portion of revenue is embezzled at the level of both councils and management committees.Decentralized management has not yet led to distributional equity or ecological sustainability, and in some villages has increased vulnerability amongst social categories such as women, generally excluded from this 'forestry game'.♦ The redistribution of annual forestry fees led to socioeconomic benefits in the villages of some rural councils, including, for example, Yokadouma (financing of three community forest applications, construction of ten classrooms, payment of six part-time teachers' wages, purchase of seven chainsaws, purchase of community television sets etc.); Lomié (financing of three community forest applications, repair of five classrooms, construction of two cultural halls), Dimako (construction of four classrooms), and Ebolowa February invested in the strengthening of the council's budget (13 240 050 CFA francs), village-level socioeconomic priorities (41 461 820 CFA francs), direct support in cash to villagers (16 508 000 CFA francs).Nevertheless, villagelevel socioeconomic priorities seem rather vague, with elements such as scholarships, book purchase, financial support for students, and hiring of temporary teachers in primary schools, which are not easy to assess.

Box 6: Degradation risks for community forests
Villagers mention, with regret, the considerable forest loss caused by the disorderly felling of trees by the logging company, Likeng and Co., with the complicity of management committee officials.The institutional arrangements surrounding the management of the Mboké Community Forest, which are far too favourable to the village chief (also the committee chair), the absence of downward accountability, and the village community's low level of control over management committee members had jeopardised the forest's ecology after only two years.The Mboké Community Forest -which the chief often refers to as 'my forest' -is, in fact, one of the most threatened in the southern part of Cameroon, due mainly to 'personal enrichment' and the confiscation of community decision making.
Source: Oyono et al. (2006) from about 1.5 million CFA francs to 25 million CFA francs.These disparities are explained by a series of factors, such as: (i) method of exploitation (artisanal or industrial, artisanal under the control of the community itself or a logging company); (ii) whether or not the community forest has been hijacked by an elite or logging company; (iii) negotiation strategies; and (iv) market structure.♦ In spite of some important benefits, there is a disproportionate gap between the revenue generated from community forests and the quality and quantity of socioeconomic benefits derived by the villages concerned.Rather, the management of financial resources from community-forest exploitation is characterized by the embezzlement of funds by committee members and strategies for individual enrichment.♦ The establishment of community forests involves significant financial costs for local communities and institutions.This is one of the many factors that hinder local adoption of the process and facilitate the 'hijacking' of several of these forests by the elite and logging companies.♦ With regard to ecological effects, the exploitation and management of community forests is not sustainable (see Box 6).Rather, it is resulting in ecosystem degradation due to the combined weakness of institutional arrangements, the personal enrichment of individual management committee officials, the maximization of profits by forest contractors, and the lack of control by regional forestry services.♦ Revenue generated by timber exploitation in the Dimako Council Forests has been Source: Assembe (2004) The Way Forward Certain aspects of forest policy and the legal and administrative arsenal that support it need to be revised (see Recommendations).This would involve facilitating policy innovation and the improvement of the forestry law and related administrative instruments in force, in the light of results, assets and shortcomings recorded in and around the field of decentralized management of forests and derived benefits.Further research on forestry policy in Cameroon should seek to identify ways in which to influence policies and decision making, as well as practices on the ground, through concrete recommendations, advocacy, networking and monitoring.
supporting the first phase of this research, as well as to the World Resources Institute, for designing and pushing this research forward.Our thanks also go to our colleagues, Charlotte Kouna, the late Samuel Efoua, Patrice Etoungou and Chimère Diaw, who contributed significantly to the realization of this work.We acknowledge the useful comments from reviews by Paolo Cerutti of CIFOR and Peter Mbile of the World Agro-forestry Centre (ICRAF, Yaoundé) and the editing by Anne M. Larson (Research Associate, CIFOR).We also wish to thank the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Jengui) Project (Yokadouma, South East Cameroon), which facilitated our integration into the study of community-managed hunting zones in South East Cameroon and provided us with initial data, notably on wildlife revenue.Our gratitude also goes to USAID/CARPE and the MacArthur Foundation for financing various aspects of this research.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Annual forestry fees allocated to selected rural councils and constituent villages, fiscal years 2002/3 and 2004 (million CFA francs)

Box 5 :
Misappropriation in the management of forest benefitsThe village of Kongo (Lomié region, East Province) received approximately 12.8 million CFA francs for compensation from ventes de coupe between 1997 and 2000.Part of this money, 6.8 million CFA francs, went into the coffers of the Lomié Rural Council.The remaining 6 million CFA francs were given to the village development committee.The committee used 1.9 million CFA francs to build two (unfinished) wells in December 2003, to finance part of the community forest application, and to assist some pupils, widows and widowers in the village in 1999.The study's sources of information show that the remaining 4.1 million CFA francs were used for personal ends by committee members and their external accomplices.

Box 1: What is democratic decentralization of forest management?
some NGOs and conservation projects in the South East region have experimented with communitymanaged hunting zones (ZICGCs, as they are known in French); ZICGCs are forest areas allocated to village communities.Another kind of hunting zone, known as Zones d'intérêt cynégétique (ZICs, French acronym), is allocated to professional hunting guides.ZICGCs and ZICs stem from a rather loose interpretation of the legal instruments relating to the allocation of forest (and therefore wildlife) resources to local communities and from concerns related to the management of protected areas in South East Cameroon(MINEF 2000).These two instruments enable village communities neighbouring wildlife-rich areas to carry out traditional hunting activities and also gain access to a portion of wildlife taxes.
Village community access to financial benefits from wildlife resource exploitation is defined by Circular No. 2978/MINEF/DFAP/AC of 14 October 1999.With regard to ZICs, the principal tax paid by hunting guides is redistributed according to the pattern of annual forestry fees: 50% for the central State, 40% for the councils concerned, and 10% for forest-edge village communities.When ZICGCs are leased to hunting guides, local communities receive direct compensation as well as 10% of the annual lease tax.Leasing is currently the prevailing method for exploiting ZICGCs.According to Ontcha Mpele et al. (2005), 16 ZICGCs exist in South East Cameroon.The local management of ZICGCs is the responsibility of COVAREFs (wildlife resource enhancement committees).The Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection receiving a delegation from CIFOR headed by Doris Capistrano during her visit to Cameroon.Photo by Patrick Nyemeck Timber is an important source of revenue in Cameroon.