**5.1. Reduced impact logging**

coming from other communities with local residents as accomplice and as a result of poor forest monitoring from forest guards." The issue of poor forest monitoring as one of main factors unpinning illegal logging in Cameroon is supported in the prevailing literature [15, 18, 19]. Others have identified poor forest governance from the relevant ministries as the root cause for this illegality [15, 20, 21]. Indeed, as Cerutti et al. [21] report, each year, Cameroon's State officials may be collecting an estimated sum of 6 million Euros in the form of informal

The council forest of Efoulan for example is linked to that of AKOM II; this can be a potential source of conflict between the two municipalities in future if practices put in place to promote the sustainable management of these forests are not clearly established in terms of objectives

The financial expenditures involved in establishing a council forest is usually high; about 50 million FCFC without including the fees for gazettement, exploitation, monitoring, and revision of the management plan [9]. These difficult and almost unrealistic financial requirements involved in the process of setting up a council forest have left local authorities at the mercy of private donors thereby relinquishing their autonomy in decision making (every donor has its own requirements which sometime run contrary to the objectives of the local

One major threat to council forest in Cameroon is illegal hunting. According to Lindsey et al. [22], illegal hunting is the hunting of protected species, without licenses/permits, in areas where it is prohibited, or using prohibited methods. During personal interviews with council forest officials, it was reported that actors involved in this practice include local indigenes and individuals from Central Africa Republic. They noted that they indulge in this illegal exercise for commercialization and subsistence purposes. Some major drivers of illegal hunting include increase demand of bush meat in both rural and urban areas, absence of other alternative

The previous section has provided the socioeconomic opportunities offered by council forests in Cameroon, their climate change mitigation potentials, as well as salient threats faced by these forests. Possible options for addressing these threats and improving their climate change mitigation potentials and socioeconomic importance are highlighted and discussed in the

livelihoods, and inadequate enforcement of regulations [22].

payments or bribes from illegal chainsaw loggers operating in the country.

86 Tropical Forests - The Challenges of Maintaining Ecosystem Services while Managing the Landscape

*4.5.2. Potential source of conflict*

and targets.

council).

*4.5.4. Illegal hunting*

**5. Discussion**

information that follows.

*4.5.3. High cost involved*

Reduced impact logging is one option that could be used to improve carbon stocks in the case study council forests. The term Reduced impact logging and its acronym RIL were first used in 1993. Traditionally, it often describes a set of forest management techniques that reduce logging impacts and improve productivity. Putz et al. [23] define it as "intensive planned and carefully controlled timber harvesting conducted by trained workers in ways that minimize the deleterious impacts of logging." Over the past two decades, sets of timber harvesting guidelines designed to mitigate the deleterious environmental impacts of tree feeling, yarding, and hauling have been known as RIL techniques. Although RIL techniques have been described as covering a variety of practices with no standard definition, De Blas and Manuel [24] define RIL techniques as: the delimitation of protected forest areas within concessions; the determination and use of minimum tree diameter at breast height; the development of a management plan and a logging inventory; minimizing the width and density of logging road networks; planning of logging roads; setting a maximum ceiling on the number of trees felled by hectare; use of directional felling; optimizing timber transport road networks; and planning of timber yards.

Despite its variability in countries, most RIL guidelines are also components of most forest management plans, often starting with recommendations related to designation of forest management units and progresses rapidly through issues related to assignment of annual coupes (i.e., cutting areas), before considering in more detail issues related to road and log landing planning, layout, and construction [23]. In Cameroon like the entire Congo basin area, RIL techniques are included into forestry laws especially those associated with mandatory management plans; i.e., preharvest planning of logging roads, determining diameter at breast height, or timber yards planning [24]. Although improved forest management (RIL inclusive) was not included in the Kyoto Protocol as an option for carbon sequestration, ample evidence is already available that selective logging using RIL techniques increases forest retention of carbon relative to conventionally logging [23]. **Figure 5** shows the total amount of carbon in the case study council forest as well as the amount of carbon obtained from conventional logging compared with RIL. It is glaring that relative to conventional logging, carbon stock in these forests increases when RIL is practiced. The calculations were done following the work done by Durrieu de Madron et al. [25] on the estimation of the impact of various type of forest exploitation on C stock in Central Africa. According this work, the extraction one cubic meter of timber per hectare would lead to the loss of 0.73 t of carbon. In conventional logging operations, if 20 m3 of timber is exploited per hectare, a total carbon stock of 20 × 0.73 t of carbon are loss per logged hectare, plus C loss due to logging skid tracks (7% of the productive area × 0.00195 kg C/m2 ) and roads (1% of the productive area × 0.028 kg C/m2 ). Thus, for instance, an exploitation of 180,000 ha of forest under conventional logging would then lead to the loss of 20 × 0.73 × 180,000 t C + 245,800 t C (from skid tracks) + 504,000 t C (from roads). That makes a total of about 3,378,000 t C. The application of RIL would preserve about 517,700 t C from this loss. These figures were therefore used to estimate the impact of RIL and conventional logging on carbon stocks in each council forest.

**Figure 5.** Total carbon stock and carbon stock in the case study council forests after RIL and conventional logging.

#### **5.2. Reforestation**

Reforestation constitutes another possible approach that could be employed to improve carbon stocks within Cameroon's council forests. Under the definitions of the Marrakesh Accords, reforestation refers to the direct human-induced conversion of nonforested land to forested land through planting, seeding, and/or the human-induced promotion of natural seed sources, on land that was forested but that has been converted to nonforested land [26]. Simply put, reforestation is planting trees or other activities geared towards the expansion of forest cover in general, though with particular reference to natural forest succession [27], or areas cleared of forests through timber harvesting and/or natural disaster.

Climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration is usually the primary benefit of reforestation as efforts to increase terrestrial carbon sequestration are based on the premise that reforestation adds to the planet's net carbon storage and helps moderate global warming by slowing the growth of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. However, there are many other ecological benefits of reforestation outside of carbon sequestration. Reforestation of degraded lands provides restoration of forest ecosystem goods and services (especially forest-based carbon), biodiversity conservation, improved air and water quality as well as improved soil fertility, structure and sustainability [27], and habitats for wildlife.

#### **5.3. Promotion of good governance in order to combat illegal logging**

Accountability, transparency, and jail terms for defaulters should be more aggressively promoted and applied around managing forest resources and ensuring that the proceeds derived from these economic activities are used to enhance the overall objectives of both the council forest and surrounding communities. The jailing of the former major of the council of Yokadouma for embezzlement of proceeds from the Yokadouma council forest provides a step in the right direction.
