**Table 10.**

*Absolute importance of impacts of the oil palm on the economy.*


#### *Environmental Impacts of the Oil Palm Cultivation in Cameroon DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97862*

**Table 11.**

*Perception of livelihood economic impacts through questionnaire and landscape methods.*

agro-industrial and artisanal sub-sectors. In the wake of agro-industrial activities (SOCAPALM, SAFACAM, CDC, PAMOL), more or less, there is a slight satisfaction with the social protection of employees even if controversies regularly emerge on related issues, for example at the level of wages. The fact remains that the latter are regularly paid and for the most part and benefit from some social security. Conversely, almost all of these agro-industrial companies do not adapt well to syndicate activities, especially when tackling economically sensitive issues such as salary increases, health care, paid leave, security, social benefits of family members of employees, etc. Dictatorship and dismissal are common practices without any prospects for inclusive dialogue and concerted negotiation within companies. The social situation between the owners of the elite palm plantations and the local populations is tense at Ngwéi. Because the impacts are so important (**Table 12**), it is necessary to give sustainable compensation to populations whose land has been occupied by agro-industries in the expected standards. One can add the fact that the health risk is high in agro-industries because health infrastructures are underequipped and obsolete. The housing conditions of workers are deplorable with overpopulation, dilapidated camps, non-functional water pumps, frequency of energy power cuts, etc.

Over the 83 impacts of the table, 37.35% are positive while 62.65% are negative signifying that on social domain, oil palm can be seen as a threat. Thus, the social and economic impacts of oil palm cultivation are numerous and sometimes contradictory. It may be overshadowed by the employment and income impacts, but the social consequences of this activity remain numerous.

In the field of the artisanal sub-sector, local populations working in oil production sites take no measures to protect their health. The gloomy observations draw by such a situation are: disorganization of the sector and the market, lack of social security for smallholders, land disputes, conflicts with agro-industries (**Table 12**), lack of personal protective equipment against heat & smell, etc. The question is that of a sector that will be fully organized, where the players remain scattered and whose activities sufficiently demonstrate a collective lack of consideration of social sustainability.

The oil palm provides local communities with many material, social and cultural uses ranging from food to traditional pharmacopoeia through decoration and construction materials, contributing to their well-being and their socio-cultural development. For the traditional pharmacopoeia, red palm oil is an antidote to poisons, palm kernel oil is useful for skin care in both new-borns and adults. Lastly, palm wine appears inescapable in all traditional ceremonies and rites concerning enthronement, weddings, deaths and funerals.


**Table 12.** *Absolute importance of impacts of the oil palm on the social environment.*

#### *Environmental Impacts of the Oil Palm Cultivation in Cameroon DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97862*

Insecurity impacts can be perceived from many angles: bodily risks, lack of safety measures and injuries and accidents' risks during clearing, hole digging, cleaning and maintenance of the palm plantation; and above all, oil palm harvesting and the pruning of the palm trees. Food insecurity is caused by low consideration in subsistence or food crops for the benefit of oil palm. Food production have decreased for almost 45, 55 and 57% of the respondents in Ngwéi, Ekondo Titi and Sanaga Maritime. There are also, land tenure (97% in Ngwéi and Sanaga Maritime and 74% in Ekondo-titi) and water resources conflicts among smallholders' farmers as well as between them and hunters.

Finally, cumulative impacts (physical and human environment) affect habitat fragmentation, degradation and loss of biodiversity, deforestation coupled with the rubber and cocoa single-crop farming or the merchant crop including plantain; food insecurity; social conflicts; social protection and collective bargaining. The population perception, shown in **Table 13**, revealed relative better access to food and social infrastructure, increase in quality of housing and better access to drinking water (due to the multiplication of drilling), but significative increase in water pollution as well as insecurity and conflicts.

At the socioeconomic level, there are enormous discrepancies depending on the category of actor. The oil palm value chain seems in fact to benefit more to agroindustrial actors and operators of second and third palm oil transformations. On the contrary, smallholders, because they are not sufficiently taken into account in sectorial policies, are poorly organized, which does not allow them to take the best advantage of the still artisanal oil palm exploitation. The quantitative economic numbers therefore drown the realities.

Socially, the results above demonstrated many negative externalities, thus raising the issue of many social impacts that many authors have addressed. Is palm oil a driver of development or a driver of inequality? [7]. Because almost 70% of the elaeisfarming areas belong to Asian or European firms, Bouron [7] considered oil plantation as "the archetype of the large capitalist plantation". Indeed, the proportion of palm oil produced by smallholders has steadily increased in Cameroon from 10 to 26% today. In Indonesia and Malaysia, smallholders account for roughly 40% of the total area of planted oil palm and as much as 33% of the output, due to lower yields, on average. There is significant variation in the way that smallholder oil palm cultivation is organized [22]. It is clear that almost 50% of the oil palm land is managed by smallholders worldwide [28]. Though, it is known that oil palm is profitable for rural households and communities in terms of new


#### **Table 13.**

*Perception of livelihood social impacts through questionnaire and landscape methods.*

employment and opportunities, farm profits, and improved rural infrastructure [28, 32, 35]. Nevertheless, this profit is not to be applied to all households and communities [36]. There are many new jobs and employment created by oil palm for landless laborers and rural households in Indonesia, in Mexico and Guatemala [37]. For some countries like Ghana and Guinea, there is a relative stable incomes and higher levels of food security [30, 38]. Migrations is another aspect underlined by [39]. Despite, employment, jobs, rural migrations, wage incomes, linked to the palm oil sector, it does not necessarily improve welfare in terms of food security, and other non-income dimensions, land conflicts, [7, 40, 41],

Some of the negative social consequences of this "oil rush" include land grabbing, large deforestation and the spoliation of indigenous peoples land rights together with unclear land property rights and laws [7, 28, 42, 43] by the large corporations and agro industries. Moreover, the educational level and financial capacities of these agro industries and corporations are also clearly higher than those of the "average" peasants, allowing them not only all the imaginable corruptive drifts (towards the administration, the traditional chiefs) but, above all, giving them an advantage in negotiation [16]. Notwithstanding efforts in developing and implementing forest protection measures, progress has been weak towards achieving this sustained goal and alleviates poverty. This has resulted in Cameroon maintaining palm oil exploitation close to protected areas. The desirability of future agricultural land to be conquered outweighs the desire to cover the forests still standing. According to data from the World Bank [44], Indonesia only granted protected area status to 12% of its vast territory, behind other comparable countries such as the DRC (13.8%) or Colombia (14.8%) and far behind Brazil (29.4%). Malaysia does better with 19.1%. In Cameroon, almost 25% of the territory is devoted to protected areas. But, the government policy can mask a great diversity of situations on the ground. Thus, the State granted 15,000 ha to Greenfil agro industry in 2014 and 50 000 ha to Camvert in 2019 near protected areas of HCV forest while de-gazetted FMU 09–025.

Such a situation shows not only the poor forest and land governance, but also, the weakness of the means of control which leads to illegal clearing, including within protected areas [45].
