Cameroon: Unsustainable forestry for European benefit

Cameroon, with 475,000 square kilometres and a 14.7 million population, has timber as a major export commodity, second to oil. The country is facing a high level of debt to bilateral creditors (France, Germany and Austria, to begin with), and also the World Bank and the IMF. Additionally, corruption at all levels has contributed to the deterioration of the country’s economy.

The forestry industry remains as one of the few profitable businesses within the formal sector, in a country which is a mixture of desert plains in the north, mountains in the central regions and tropical rainforest in the south and east. The amount of forested area is estimated at 225,000 square kilometres, of which 175,000 have been identified by the government as productive forests.

A new forestry law was passed in 1994, setting basically a framework for industrialisation. The law identifies six different types of logging permits: sales of standing volume, exploitation permits, individual felling authorisation, concessions, state exploitation and wood recovery permit. Of these, only concessions require management plans and are allocated through a competitive bidding process --though prioritising price to quality. The Sales of Standing Volume are the most solicited since they do not request a management plan, foreigners can apply for them and allow sub-contracts --which diminish responsibility and accountability for forest exploitation.

The country has weak legislation monitoring and enforcement processes and lacks political will to stop illegal logging and trade, which presently are a trait of the Cameroonian forestry sector. It has been predicted that logging at this rate means that the forests in Cameroon will run out of commercial timber within 15 years.

European companies dominate the forest industry in Cameroon --as concessionaries and also subcontractors to concessions allocated to Cameroonian nationals. Also most timber production goes to European processing plants and consumers: in 1998, Italy and France accounted for over 61% of log exports, superseding China which occupies now the third place, followed by Spain and Portugal. Other major beneficiaries are Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

Unsustainable logging has meant that companies are moving ever further into primary forest areas, driving roads into large areas of previously inaccessible forest, thereby opening the forest up to other activities, with decimation of wildlife in many areas being but one of the negative derivations.

Though logging companies are supposed to pay a local tax to contribute to development projects, local people rarely see any benefit from their operations. The lack of any real choice in their development options may explain why some forest-dependent people prefer illicit operations. The intrusion of the cash economy into the forests has disrupted, for example, Pygmies’ traditionally close-to-nature lives. Now, they often capture bushmeat for commercial traders who follow the logging roads or find commercially-exploitable trees for loggers, thereby accelerating the end of their livelihood.

Closing the circle, intimidation of local people, NGOs and government officials by company employees tightens the knot around Cameroonian people's neck.

All the above shows clearly why government officials --from both Cameroon and European countries involved in logging, trade and consumption of this wood-- are so unwilling to address the underlying causes of forest loss, among which unsustainable consumption patterns in consumer countries and external debt constitute some of the major causes.

Source: WRM's bulletin Nº 52, November 2001 

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