- Cameroon: Baka Losing Out to Lobéké and Boumba National Parks

"We are born in the forest and we do everything there, gather, hunt and fish. Where do they want us to make our lives? They say we cannot go to the forest - where are we supposed to live?" Baka community member from the Lobéké and Boumba region.

Lobéké National Park was established in 1999 in South East Cameroon over 220,000 hectares of flora and fauna rich lands, much of which had until then been used for subsistence purposes by Bantu communities and the majority Baka "Pygmy" communities, who primarily hunt and gather in the extensive forests covering the region. To the North West of Lobéké adjoining the Boumba River lies Boumba National Park, which was officially established after Lobéké. The area between the Boumba River and Lobéké Park is home to many communities engaged in farming, hunting, fishing and gathering for mainly subsistence purposes, along with commercial safari companies who operate across the huge (greater than 400,000 hectares) sport hunting areas which were established around the Lobéké Park, the smaller community-managed hunting zones, and several large logging concessions.

The two parks' proximity to the borders of the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo, coupled with the enormous number and variety of large mammals in the region's forest have made this area a prime target for illegal commercial bushmeat hunters and traders, and trophy hunters, who pay hefty fees to local safari companies to hunt. Live parrots, ivory, and other illegally obtained forest resources are regularly obtained in or smuggled through the area, and several logging companies are also active.

For hunting and gathering peoples in Cameroon Lobéké National Park is significant because the Cameroon Ministry for the Environment and Forests along with various international NGOs established legal government permission for strictly regulated access by Baka and other local communities to a minor portion of the park to carry out subsistence fishing and gathering, which under normal circumstances is contrary to Cameroon law. Current plans by conservation agencies active in the zone, including WWF and GTZ, are to ensure that each of the newly gazetted zones surrounding the parks are attributed to clear stakeholders, who would become involved in the management of their areas over time. Key stakeholders in the forests upon which many Baka have relied comprise conservation interests, including large, Northern-based conservation organisations; commercial interests, including sport-hunting enterprises and logging companies; poachers and bushmeat traders, who often have significant local political backing; and Bantu (mostly Bagando) communities relying mainly upon agriculture, but who also rely upon products from the forests around their communities.

This stakeholder approach to conservation is laudable, and one that reflects a wider trend in much of Sub-Saharan Africa towards the devolution of land management authority. However, from a human rights perspective there are serious problems with the matrix of conservation zones around Boumba and Lobéké, especially the way in which Baka customary rights to forest resources are being eliminated under the impulse of conservation pressures from outside the area. For example, Baka communities are key forest stakeholders in the region as they are numerous, and most rely upon forest resources to secure their livelihoods. However, their views were marginalised during consultations about the establishment of the parks, and they have been almost totally marginalised from most or all of the schemes which are supposed to enable local involvement and empowerment in the management of the different classes of protected areas, including the park and the various types of "buffer zones" which have been created.

One of the new mechanisms for enabling local participation in these different zoned areas is to establish Zones d'Intéret Cynégétique à Gestion Communautaire (ZICGC), areas where communities are able to exploit the flora and fauna, subject to the development of supposedly community-led management plans with oversight by government conservation authorities. Membership of the group of community delegates responsible for managing the ZICGCs is overwhelmingly dominated by established local elites, and the committee selection methods and criteria, including the need for French literacy mitigates against the membership of representatives from the Baka community. For example, as of November 2002 in ZICGC 9, located between the Boumba River and Lobéké Park, to the west of the Moloundou Road, less than 10% of the delegates were from the Baka majority, and they were broadly chosen by local Bantu chiefs, not by the Baka themselves.

The consequence of this lack of participation by Baka is that decisions of the communal forest management committee, for example, to allow safari companies access to prime forest hunting areas in the ZICGC, usually for a small fee, can come into direct conflict with the livelihood strategies of Baka who rely on these zones to satisfy their subsistence requirements. The Forest Peoples Programme has knowledge of several cases occurring over the past two years where Baka were chased out of their traditional hunting zones located outside the parks by hunting guards operating under this regime. The money paid by authorised users accrues to the management committee, who may use these funds for community development projects; community investment guided by a group which does not represent the whole community.

Most conservation managers in the region agree that subsistence hunting by Baka in and around the protected areas of South East Cameroon does not pose a serious threat to biodiversity. The current consensus of conservation actors in Cameroon is that commercial hunting, especially for bushmeat, presents the gravest threat to endangered species, and legal and illegal logging poses the key threat to rare or endangered habitats. Local conservation authorities have so far found few adequate local incentives to prevent the trade in illegal bushmeat, and governance of the logging sector in Cameroon has been chronically weak, so these dangers are still prevalent in the Lobéké Region, in spite of the presence of several internationally-funded conservation projects. The conservation priority of the international conservation community has continued to override local livelihood concerns and communities' customary rights, and rather than targeting commercial trade in bushmeat and backing it up with strong enforcement measures, the protection measures now in place target those with the most to lose. The paradox is that they are doing this in order to protect the resources and habitats that local people, especially Baka, already cherish, but are powerless to protect because they do not have secure rights to their forests.

Many Baka facing increasing forest restrictions have expressed their desire to enter into an equitable dialogue over conservation plans with protected area managers, but no formal mechanisms to enable this have so far been developed. Based upon their past experience with conservation authorities, Baka are sceptical about the commitment of conservation organisations to principles of openness, fairplay, and negotiation with them. New models of collaboration between Baka communities and the conservation authorities will have to be developed if "participatory" schemes like Lobéké are to be seen as successful, and local peoples' rights to their lands and therefore livelihood are to be made secure.

This article is based upon information generated through community interviews which were carried out in South East Cameroon over a two year period as part of a project to document the impact of protected areas on indigenous peoples in 7 African countries, and to promote the application of the new conservation principles embodied in, inter alia, WWF International's "Statement of Principles on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation," the World Conservation Union's resolutions on Indigenous Peoples, the World Commission on Protected Areas, and the relevant provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity, to which over 177 countries are signatories.

This new model of conservation is based upon principles that recognise the rights of indigenous peoples to use, own and control their traditional territories, and which protect their traditional knowledge and skills. The new approach aims for working partnerships with indigenous peoples based upon principles of full and informed consent and equitable sharing of benefits resulting from conservation activities.

This project is being carried out by Forest Peoples Project and its local partners, with funding provided by the UK Community Fund. For more information see www.forestpeoples.org

By: John Nelson, FPP, e-mail: johnnelson@blueyonder.co.uk

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- Congo, Democratic Republic: Selling biodiversity under World Bank assistance

Some years ago, wildlife photographer and bushmeat activist Karl Ammann had presented World Bank's President Wolfensohn with evidence linking industrial logging with the commercialisation of the bush meat trade throughout most of Central Africa.

Wolfensohn replied that "preventing the types of abuses you describe is a clear responsibility of the industry, as well as the government authorities concerned."

On December 2002, Karl Ammann replicated with an open letter. He denounces that in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the World Bank appears to be on the front line of assisting with a proposed massive reactivation of the forestry sector.

According to Ammann, the projections outlined by a World Bank expert, in an Aide Memoire, "are terrifying to say the least, considering that we are looking at the remaining half of the Congo River Basin which has not been affected yet by industrial timber mining:

- The opening up, in form of new logging concessions, of 60 million hectares of primary rain forest.
- A projected annual extraction/mining of some 6-10 million cubic meters, essentially doubling the output from the Central African region.
- An estimated annual 'surface rental tax' income of some U$ 60 to 360 million.
- An annual industry turn over of some U$ 1-2 billion. Mostly of course staying in form of profits in some off shore accounts.
- The creation of some 60,000 jobs.

How realistic are these projections in the context of the results being achieved --partially under World Bank supervision-- in any of the surrounding countries? Bank officials are best placed to answer this question and some more regarding the actual cost-benefits of logging of primary rain forests. Based on the figures I have they are clearly a pipe dream. However pipe dreams put out officially by World Bank experts will make any conservation effort --especially the creating of additional protected areas-- a lot more difficult".

Karl Ammann considers that "As for logging sustainably 60 million hectares of primary rain forest, to be opened up within a span of only 5 to 10 years, there are World Bank experts on record stating: 'We are not going to try to define SFM (Sustainable Forest Management) because nobody can agree on it'. This is probably more true in Central Africa than anywhere else. I also have a copy of meeting minutes with World Bank officials being quoted as saying: 'In Central Africa dysfunctional governments have to be considered a given'."

The letter goes on considering that it is very likely that after most of the really valuable timber has been carted away, the 35 million people, now estimated to depend on these forests will actually be poorer than they are today. In most areas there will be no more protein from wildlife under the present projections and proposals.

The Aide Memoire by Mr. Debroux, the Bank's lead negotiator and advisor, dated March 2002, makes it clear that the Bank has been involved very actively in the drafting of the new forestry laws which were signed by President Kabila in August 2002.

Ammann notes that the word 'faune' or wildlife does not appear a single time in the Aide Memoire nor any reference to the logging industry having to accept the responsibility to actively manage the wildlife in their concession. Conversely, the Aide Memoire seems to suggest that this responsibility will be passed on to the relevant government departments, with the idea of getting revenues from taxes fixed on sport hunting (for capture and export) and byproducts such as ivory, rhino horn, skins, teeth, tails, skulls, etc. "An approach which has not worked anywhere else", he remarks.

Top decision makers, under World Bank advise, have made a conscient decision that Congo's wildlife might become a liability in maximizing the returns from the forestry sector --at least in areas outside the protected parks. Further developments show that neither local officials nor World Bank experts take into account the basic of trying to conserve biodiversity.

"We are clearly going backwards, in a country which offered some hope in the sense that a new approach to industrial logging would have been possible", is the disappointed conclusion of Karl Ammann.

Article based on information from "An Open Letter to the World Bank President" by Karl Ammann, e-mail: kamman@form-net.com , disseminated by Jane Dewar, Gorilla Haven, sent by Philip Owen, e-mail: owen@soft.co.za

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- Congo, Democratic Republic: Mbuti forest peoples' survival threatened

The total number of hunter-gatherer Mbuti 'Pygmies' who live in the Ituri tropical forest is not known, although it has been estimated at 30,000 occupying 50% of the 37,860 sq km of Mambasa. Their existence is already extremely fragile: their land rights are not recognised either in law or in the customary rights systems of neighbouring peoples, and the authorities of the 13,000 sq km Okapi Wildlife Reserve no longer permit them to hunt large game. Instead, they survive by hunting small animals and bartering labour, firewood and game with the surrounding Bantu in exchange for food.

The forest, and therefore the Mbuti's food supply, is under increasing threat from the rapidly spreading commercial plantations of Ugandan timber companies and the increasing number of coltan mines (coltan is an important ingredient in the manufacturing of capacitors, which regulate voltage and store energy in mobile phones).

Although relations between the Mbuti hunter-gatherers and the traditional Bila fisher-farmers (who practice shifting cultivation) are generally good and involve sustainable forest use, the forest has also been under increasing pressure from incoming gold panners. This has involved incomers clearing the forest to create large permanent fields to grow produce to sell to the gold panners at exorbitant prices, upsetting both the local economy, local ecology and traditional livelihood of the Mbuti, thus exposing them to vulnerable conditions.

To add to their plight, the Ugandan-backed rebel groups Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) and Congolese Rally for Democracy-National (RCD-N) have been fiercely harassing the Mbuti with acts of terrorism including cases of execution, rape, abduction, torture and even cannibalism and forced cannibalism. In the past months tens of thousands of civilians have fled before an advance by the MLC, RCD-N and the Union of Congolese Patriots, who are hoping to win control of mineral resources including coltan, gold and diamonds. More than 10,000 refugees from Ituri have crossed the border into Uganda, and a reported 100,000 people have taken refuge in Beni. Recent reports suggest at least 3000 "Pygmies" have fled the forest ("for the first time in ages" according to the UN Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo-MONUC). A group of at least 1000 have sought shelter in the village of Mangina, while other camps of the displaced are located between Mambasa to Beni. The poor security situation has prevented humanitarian agencies from working in Ituri, leaving the Mbuti without adequate food, shelter or security.

The Mbuti are therefore in much need of support. They are suffering from a civil war, total alien to them, resulting in innumerable human rights violations; their territorial rights to a forest which is clearly their ancestral home are not recognized; their food supply is curtailed by conservation programmes that deny them access to their normal sources of protein; their territory is being invaded by soldiers, coltan and gold miners and agriculturalists from other areas; their diverse tropical forest is being substituted by monoculture tree plantations. Something needs to be done, and fast!

By Lucy Mulvagh, FPP, e-mail: lucy@fppwrm.gn.apc.org, http://forestpeoples.gn.apc.org For more information on the situation in Ituri, readers can consult the following sources: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: http://www.irinnews.org , ReliefWeb: http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf
Refugees International, 'Forgotten People: In the Ituri District of the Democratic Republic of the Congo', 15 January 2003,
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/cgi-bin/ri/other?occ=00568&spotlight=1

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- Senegal: Women's project restores nature and benefits the community

Two different natural ecosystems go to make up the Popenguine-Guéréo natural reserve, located 45 km to the south of Dakar, capital of Senegal: a continental part with rugged hills covered by a primary forest and a maritime part, mainly consisting of a rocky habitat where fish come to spawn.

The zone was classified in 1986 as a natural reserve with a view to reversing degradation from deforestation, depletion of meadows and successive droughts that had led to a considerable loss of biodiversity.

In 1987 and as a community response, 116 women voluntarily and spontaneously set up the Popenguine Women's Gathering for the Protection of Nature (RFPPN, its French acronym) as a way of contributing to the conservation and restoration of the zone's biodiversity. These women have risked their reputation and even their marriages, because they have used their time and energy in establishing a natural reserve for the community when, in the eyes of their neighbours, they should have stayed at home and devoted themselves to the domestic tasks of Senegalese wives and mothers. But the dynamic women of the village of Popenguine and its surroundings have finally convinced those who were against them. Slowly, they have shown that they can regenerate and conserve their environment, encourage eco-tourism, ensure forest restoration and survival of the flora and fauna, while benefitting the community as a whole.

Year after year, they have introduced thousands of trees from the indigenous flora. Slowly the fauna was reconstructed and thus 195 species of birds, gerogryphic antelopes, duikers or small grey antelopes, striped jackals, mongooses, algalia cats, and monkeys of the callithrix family (titis or tamarins) have reappeared.

With time, strictly environmental objectives have evolved and now the socio-economic demands of the women involved (inter alia, generation of income, solving the demand for cereals and fuel) have also been integrated. A programme for sustainable development has thus been created, ignoring models imposed from the outside and on the contrary, basing itself on the conservation of the local environment from a grass-roots, empiric approach.

Since 1995, the group has extended its action and joined efforts to restore a vital space of some 100km2, known as the Ker Cupaam Community Space, in homage to the feminine spirit protecting the site. This space includes the whole Popenguine-Guéréo Reserve and the territories of eight villages surrounding the reserve. The villages are represented by the Women's Economic Interest Groups (GIE), integrating the 1555 member strong COPRONAT cooperative for the protection of nature.

The present RFPPN programme is linked around:

a) Management of forest restoration: establishment in each village of nurseries for timber tree indigenous species as a source of fuel, and fruit trees and ornamental plants for sale; management of the village forest, creation of a network for the distribution of fuel to avoid logging timber tree species.

b) Health management: organisation of the collection and classification of domestic waste, treatment and transformation into compost, construction of latrines.

c) Food management: establishment of cereal banks and family vegetable plots

d) Training in community management of protected zones: training on waste treatment, horticulture and management of natural spaces, initiation in computer science, the catering trade, construction of a training centre, computer and audiovisual equipment with a view to training young people.

e) Tourist management: extension and equipming of the tourist camping zone.

To reverse erosion, stone barriers and contention dams were built to lessen the speed of rainwater. Another objective is the rehabilitation of the mangroves on Lake Somone, at the southern limit of the territory.

The women of Popenguine proudly show off their work: the shiny mangroves and the full lagoon in spite of the scant rainfall. A decade ago, regeneration of Lake Somone and the Popenguine region was a dream. Woulimata Thiaw, president of the women's cooperative is proud of the results of their work. She smilingly repeats that success has had its price: hard work and that sustainable development means "to be conscious all the time of the effects of our actions on the future and on the future of our children and grandchildren. This is sustainability: the decisions we take. We have to be sure that there is continuity."

Article based on information from: "Ker Cupaam: ejemplo para el desarrollo sostenible", sent by Liliana Marcos Barba, Canal Solidario, e-mail: lilianita_81@hotmail.com ; Cultivant la Diversité - Afrique de l'Ouest, La gestion de l'espace communautaire Ker Cupaam, http://www.grain.org/gd/fr/case-studies/cases/wa-abstract-senegal-fr.cfm ; Case study, La Réserve Naturelle de Popenguine (Sénégal) : une expérience de développement durable basée sur la conservation de la biodiversité, Paul Ndiaye, http://www.cdr.dk/sscafrica/ndi2-f-s.htm

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- South Africa: Tree plantations render corporation profits but fire, damages and death for the people

For the global pulp and paper group Sappi, money does grow on trees. Indeed, the company's latest annual report suggests that it grows most efficiently in South Africa. The report noted that Sappi's southern Africa division, Sappi Forest Products, represented 15% of group sales, but contributed 36% to the group's operating profits in the year to September 2002. "We have an extraordinarily low cost base in South Africa, which has unique competitive advantages in fibre production because of the speed at which trees grow and low inherent energy costs," the report noted.

Sappi is a South African-based international forest products company, and is ranked in the top 20 pulp and paper manufacturers in the world. From a totally South African company in 1989, the company has become an international organisation with manufacturing facilities on three continents being a major producer in its core businesses of coated woodfree paper and dissolving pulp. Sappi Saiccor, in South Africa, is the world's largest and lowest cost producer of dissolving pulp, used in the manufacture of viscose fibre, with a 15% share of the world market.

During 1998 the Sappi group was restructured into a fine paper company and a forest products company, with head offices in London and Johannesburg respectively. The latter owns and manages nearly 540,000 hectares of monoculture tree plantations in South Africa and produces bleached and unbleached paper pulp for own consumption and market pulp.

Sappi's executive chairman Eugene van As noted that following the September 11, 2001 attacks, consumption of coated paper, much of which is used in producing glossy magazines, fell 12%, "the sharpest decline most participants can recall". However, despite losing money in the US, Sappi came through the year with reasonable earnings. He highlighted the benefits of the geographical diversity of the company, which has plants in North America, Europe and South Africa.

That's good news for the corporation. But what about South Africa and its people? The company boasts of the "excellent operating efficiencies" in the region, but that may be just a way of how profits and liabilities are settled. It's not the company who bear the environmental and human costs of its activities --externalities, they call it. It will not pay for the diminishing or contaminated water, the shrinking forests, the lost ecosystems. It will not pay for the poverty of the people deprived of their livelihood and now depending on meagre salaries that allow for those "excellent operating efficiencies".

According to a report from the South African environmental organisation Timber Watch, typical forests in this country are restricted to frost-free areas with mean annual rainfall of more than 525 mm in the winter rainfall region and more than 725 mm rainfall in the summer rainfall region. They occur from sea level to over 2 100 m above sea level. They rarely burn, mainly thanks to the humidity "bubble" that is trapped within the canopy, and the dense greenery of shrubs and small trees that make up the eco-tone or margin. Under extremely hot and dry (berg wind) conditions fires may occur and destroy the forest structure, but this usually occurs where the ecotone has been damaged, often as a result of timber plantations being too close to the forest margin which together with industrial crops such as sugar cane, have expanded into natural areas, thus increasing the pressure.

The most damaging impacts of plantations on forests are ground water depletion (SAWAC, South African Water Crisis, can bear witness to that), and displacement of human communities from farmlands. These lead to a wide range of secondary impacts such as overexploitation of forest products including mammals and birds, slash and burn clearing for subsistence agriculture, and increased exposure to alien plant infestations and fire.

Precisely, in July 2002, serious wildfires hit Mpumalanga Province, with several damages including death toll and injured people. Although prescribed, burns run out of control. Explanations pointed to dry and very windy conditions, the El Nino phenomena and sudden weather changes. However, it's worth noting that Sappi has established in Mpumalanga 245,000 hectares of pulpwood and sawlogs plantations as well as a pulp and paper mill which encouraged forestry. Some coincidence?

Article based on information from: Sappi Shows Strong Growth in Region's Fertile Ground, John Fraser, http://allafrica.com/stories/200301030360.html ; MBendi Information for Africa, http://www.mbendi.co.za/cosp.htm ; Forests in South Africa Under Threat, Timber Watch, http://www.timberwatch.org.za/forests_in_south_africa_under_threat.htm ; Forest Fires in South Africa, 12 July 2002, http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/current/archive/za/2002/07/za_07122002.htm

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