**5.1.2 Agricultural expansion**

Agricultural expansion is another obstacle to the success of sustainable forest management under a potential REDD mechanism in these countries. Both subsistence and mechanized forms of agriculture play a significant role in forest loss and degradation in Cameroon and DRC. Deforestation happens in these countries partly due to agribusinesses undertaken by large multinational corporations involved in plantation agriculture. This is due largely to a growing demand for cash crops – notably robber, cocoa, palm nuts (Mitchell et al., 2007). Subsistence agriculture in forest communities in Cameroon and DRC like in most other countries in the tropics occurs through slash-and-burn, a practice that involves the cutting down of trees and burning them to open up an area for cultivation. After two or three seasons of cultivation the farmer abandons the plot and colonizes a new forest area as the old plot loses fertility due to the burning of the soil. This primitive practice, apart from its ecological downside, contributes significantly to both soil and forest carbon emissions. Bellassena & Gutz (2008) in an assessment of differential revenues that "a farmer could get from 1 ha of land out of two alternative land-uses: shifting cultivation [slash-and-burn], the

Obstacles to a Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Forest

ownership contentions (Lescuyer et al., 2009).

countries.

**5.1.4 Market failure** 

Management Under REDD in Central Africa: A Two-Country Analysis 39

forest systems that make access difficult" (Reed & Miranda, 2007). This limited access could be attributed to the socio-economic and political instability the country went through during the last quarter of the last century. However, with growing political stability since the mid-2000s, and with the growing need of improving socio-economic conditions, it is likely that mining operations will occur in formerly less accessible forest areas. If provisions are not made in the REDD framework strategy for these countries to limit the extent and intensity of these activities within their forests areas; it could undermine the highly anticipated post-Kyoto emissions reduction contributions by these

A significant issue peculiar to most tropical timber exporting nations is market failure. Many services provided by tropical forests (table 2) are not traded in markets and, as a result have not established markets based on prices and therefore do not enter into the decisions of private and public sector actors (Pearce & Warford, 1993). For example, in both Cameroon and DRC the government is the country's land owner who has the responsibility of maintaining lands under forest cover, but because the government does not get the full value of social benefits provided by forests, there is little or no incentive to protect the forests and the underlying lands. The market has failed to stimulate these governments and the private sector in the direction of socially based objectives. This causes these governments to misplace their priorities, hence, ushering in inefficiencies that lead to deforestation and forests degradation and, consequently, forest loss. Lack of information regarding the value of non-market benefits of forest is the reason for market failure (Pearce, 2001; Wertz-Kanounnikoff, 2006). In Cameroon for example, Fomété (2001) notes that non-market goods such as biodiversity, watershed protection, recreation, and carbon sequestration appear to be of low importance to the government and to the local population hence, no incentives to actively engage in seeking information on the market value of forests and other environmental services. The failure of markets to capture the value of non-priced services of the forest is an indirect but meaningful cause of forest loss that shapes the non conservation attitude of forest exploiters in these countries. Therefore, assigning a price to the services provided by forests and charging the price to the beneficiaries of these services is a good strategy for the REDD mechanism for two reasons: (1) it reduces over exploitation of the forests (for timber, firewood, agriculture etc.) hence reducing emissions and (2) it generates income for the protector of these services. The concept of payment for environmental services is not new to the Congo Basin region. However, integrating it into the REDD mechanism would be challenging as a majority of the people in the region are very poor and depend on nature's free services for their livelihoods. Even with the significant funding by international organizations and financial institutions (for example, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Development Program, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the African Development Bank and the World Bank) toward the implementation of the concept in the region, very little has been accomplished (Lescuyer et al., 2009). The land tenure crisis in the region will compound the problem for the REDD mechanism. This is already the case where a proposed project by Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund to pay for biodiversity services in the Ngoyla-Mintom forest and the Bonobo forest in Cameroon and DRC respectively has been delayed due to land

traditional land-use pattern in southern Cameroon, or carbon credits as compensation for the conservation of primary forest, …found that a break-even price of \$2.85/t of carbon dioxide equivalent would level shifting cultivation with "Compensated Reduction" (Bellassena & Gitz, 2008)." The conclusion is that it is more profitable for the poor shifting cultivator farmer in Cameroon to preserve the forest under the REDD mechanism rather than to slash-and-burn it to grow crops. Unfortunately, in spite decades of educating this forest dwelling communities about the negative effects of practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, the practice still persists. This persistence can be linked to the poverty factor, a condition which the REDD mechanism must not undermined if it is to succeed in a post-2012 emissions reduction mechanism.
