**5.1.6 Lack of secure land tenure**

The local populations in many communities in Cameroon and DRC have little or no incentive to protect the forest resource because they feel they have no stake in it as the

Obstacles to a Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Forest

Cameroon (Acworth et al., 2001).

land for a livelihood.

forest management in Cameroon and DRC.

or stages in the causation chains (Angelsen & Culas, 1996).

Management Under REDD in Central Africa: A Two-Country Analysis 43

example, since 1991, the Cameroon Development Corporation has expanded about 1,340 hectares of its plantations into the Onge-Mokoko forests in the Sourhwest province of

Debt service and low per capita income is another obstacle to sustainable forest management in Cameroon and DRC. External pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to recover debts owed them by the governments of these countries has left both nations' forests vulnerable. For example, the forest policy adopted by the government of Cameroon in 1994 was strongly influenced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, mainly through the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) that favors longer durations of concessions to logging companies, and encourages large forest areas for concessions (Ekoko, 1997). Most structural adjustment policies prescribed by the World Bank and the IMF are meant to liberalize the economies of countries adopting them and open up their markets to global economy. Instead, it has presented mixed fortunes for developing countries. Since its inception only a few countries like China, Brazil and Indonesia have been able to get meaningful benefits from the program. The rest of the developing countries have instead witnessed economic downturns (Brown & Quiblier, 1994). In Cameroon, reduction in public spending has instead led to unemployment forcing people to rely on subsistence farming at the detriment of the forest (Benhin & Barbier, 1999; Gbetnkom, 2008). In DRC the SAP created a situation where high unemployment (Jauch, 1999) left many families to rely on agricultural encroachment on forests lands for survival. The IMF call for economic liberalization in recent years has also not yielded much for the people as the economic indexes of both countries remains low. According to the 2011 Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal's Index of Economic Freedom report, Cameroon's per capita income is \$2,147. Its FDI inflow is \$337.5 million (Index of Economic Freedom, 2011). However, its external debt fell from an all-time-high of \$11.11 billion in 1998 to \$2.94 billion in 2009 (World Bank, 2009); thanks to the increased revenues from the forest sector (Fometé & Cerutti, 2008). The situation in DRC is no better. The country's current (2011) external debt is \$13.5 Billion. Its per capita income of \$332 is one of the lowest in Africa. Its FDI inflow is equally low at \$2.1 billion (Index of Economic Freedom, 2011). High debts, low FDI and weak economies have left the peoples of Cameroon and DRC with little option but to continue deforesting and degrading their

In all, a combination of economic pressures to accelerate harvesting, corruption, the weakness of government forest administration, inappropriate concession license allocation and timber taxation systems, and the negative impacts of macroeconomic trade, population pressure, and Structural Adjustment Program polices have led to decades of unsustainable

The aforementioned obstacles to sustainable forest management in Cameroon and DRC are summarized in the following conceptual framework model (figure 1 – influence diagram) of direct and indirect causes of forest loss and/or degradation. Although the influence diagram appears to show some agents as directly linked to deforestation, there is actually no clear cut separation of direct and indirect causes of deforestation. In reality, forest loss is the result of long chains of causation that are not linear, but have feedback loops at some points

**5.1.8 External debt servicing and misguided macro-economic policies** 

governments of these countries continue to appropriate forest lands and its resources. About 97% of natural forests in Cameroon belong to the government, while all natural forests in DRC are government owned (Cotula & Mayers, 2009). This clearly shows that land tenure in both countries is unclear or insecure even though both countries allocate community forests for the benefit of the communities. In the absence of well-defined property rights (complete specification of rights, exclusive ownership, transferability, and enforceability) the forest has become a "common property" with the local populations engaging in forest clearance as a way of showing occupation and ownership. They base their actions on the customary law of *droit de hache* – axe right – whereby, ownership of land and its resources is acclaimed by putting it into productive use, by cutting down of trees. The use of common property leads to externalities ("tragedy of the common") as no one is liable for the cost of the externalities. Although the governments of Cameroon and DRC continue to exercise "authoritarian and repressive policing" in their forests sectors, the "limited government capacity to monitor compliance and sanction non-compliance" (Cotula & Mayers, 2009) has allowed the customary law practice of *droit de hache* to continue. A challenge for the REDD mechanism in Cameroon and DRC, and in all other Congo Basin countries therefore, would be to help amend current decentralization policies and encourage genuine land tenure reforms that would lead to effective local control of forest management.
