**5.1.1 Poverty**

36 Sustainable Forest Management – Case Studies

and 15° 32' 0" East of the Greenwich Meridian. It is the second largest country in Africa with a total area of 2,345,410 km² most of which (about 95%) is forests. The DRC has an estimated forest area of about 133 million hectares (52% of the Congo Basin forests), the largest confinement in Africa and the third largest in the world. Like in Cameroon, the forests of DRC are rich in species, and harbor some of the rarest and most endangered species of mammals in the world – gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, etc. – birds, insects, and plants. However, in recent decades, the abundant forests in Cameroon and DRC have been disappearing at an alarming rate. In Cameroon, between 1980 and 1995 an estimated 2 million hectares of the forest was lost (Ichikawa, 2006). In 2000 the annual deforestation rate ranged between 80,000 and 200,000 square hectares (Ndoye & Kaimowitz, 2000), a trend that continued throughout 2000s, leading to the loss of about 4.4 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2010 (Cameroon Forest Information and Data, 2010). Degradation also poses a serious threat to the country's forests. With some of the richest species of timber8 in the world, the forests of Cameroon have attracted a lot of commercial logging enterprises over the years. Beginning in the 1970s, in an effort to bust its economy, the government of Cameroon encouraged large scale commercial logging in the country which opened up the forests for different environmental and socially damaging activities such as, road construction, slash-and-burn agriculture, hunting, illegal settlements, illegal logging, selective logging, plantation agriculture, and loss of cultural value (Mbatu, 2009). In DRC, logging practice that began in the 1920s gained momentum in the 1970s and 1980s. In spite of the devastating civil war in the 1990s logging activities continued, resulting to a 3% loss of the country's forest between 1990 and 2005 (Congo Basin Program [CBP], 2011). Although official reports indicate that 500,000 cubic meters of timber is harvested annually from the forests of DRC, many observers, including the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO),

The alarming rate of deforestation and degradation made Cameroon and DRC attractive choices for REDD pilot projects. The first REDD pilot project in Cameroon was initiated in 2007 by Service Element on Forest Monitoring (GSE FM) of the Global Monitoring for Environmental and Security (GMES)9 with the aim of "integrating the application of Earth Observation (EO) technologies with the policy formulation" (COMIFAC, 2010). By integrating EO technologies with policy formulation Cameroon has made progress towards a national REDD framework as international cooperation10, collaborative work between the country's Ministry of Environment and Nature protection, GSE FM, and other stakeholders involvement has led to the development and approval of the R-PIN, and with the R-PP nearing completion. The REDD process was launched in DRC in January 2009. Through the collaborative efforts of many bilateral and multilateral partners led by the country's Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Tourism (MECNT) the county is making steady progress towards a post-2012 national REDD framework strategy. The

8 Some of the most valued timber species in the forests of Cameroon include: Sapeli, Moabi, Azobé,

9 GMES is a joint venture of the European Space agency and the European Union that provides information on the global status of the environment mainly through the use of remote sensing and

10 Cameroon's REDD initiative has benefitted from a "south-south" cooperation with the Central American nation of Bolivia which is ahead of Cameroon in meeting the REDD modalities, especially

place the figure at more than double (CBP, 2011).

Iroko, Okoumé Wengé, and Doussié.

geographic information technologies.

with regards to the technical aspect of the REDD scheme.

Poverty is an important driver of deforestation (Angelsen & Wunder, 2003; Fischer et al., 2005; Soriaga & Walpole, 2007) and many studies in Cameroon (for example, Gbetnkom, 2008) and in DRC (for example, Iloweka, 2002) have documented the role poverty plays in forests loss and degradation in these countries. Reducing poverty in these countries, especially in forest communities could lead to lower rates of deforestation and degradation. However, Angelsen and Wunder (2003) have noted that increasing wealth of the rural poor does not generally translate to improved forest ecosystem since the accumulation of wealth, especially in the hands of a few elites could act as a springboard for attracting commercial logging enterprises.
