In Cameroon, Saving Forests, Teaching Rights

By Lane Hartill

Simon Pierre wasn't sure what to make of his captors, the ones who were threatening him with death if he tried to escape. They were, after all, his neighbors.

It all started at 10:30 a.m. last November when he stumbled across two illegal woodcutters in the forest that belongs to his village. He confronted them but was soon surrounded by about 20 men from a village just down the road from his own.

Simon Pierre was confused. These were the same men he passed on his way to swim in the Kadey River, the same men that he'd greet when he saw them on the road hauling plantains. But now, in the middle of the forest, with 18 valuable trees felled and cut into planks and a log truck waiting to transport them, his friends were suddenly a lot less neighborly.

Simon Pierre lives in Dimako I, a village of slouching mud houses and children in ratty T-shirts that straddles the road heading south into the heart of Cameroon's humming rain forest. Stepping into the bush here requires a machete and patience. The plantain trees have leaves as big as surfboards and the towering sapelli trees—which can bring more than $2,000 apiece—wear great veils of foliage several stories high.

In the eastern region of Cameroon where Dimako I is located, timber accounts for 11 percent of the country's GDP. But little is invested here. The road is dirt, the houses have palm-thatched roofs, there's no well, and not a single home has ever felt the warmth of a light bulb. No medical facilities exist in the village, and the health center down the road is closed and locked.

This poverty is one reason why Simon Pierre was patrolling the forest. He is part of a surveillance team that walks the forest boundaries to make sure no one is crossing into it and illegally logging.

As he slices through the underbrush, he points out a tree that has had a swatch of bark sliced away. On the ground are the remnants of the bark, which had been spray-painted red, indicating the boundary of Dimako I's community forest. The illegal logging was no accident.

Struggling for a Piece of the Wealth

Dimako I's forest is 4,700 acres of land. The village has been struggling for years to get the government of Cameroon to officially recognize it as a community forest. This would allow villagers to harvest logs to raise money for much-needed village projects. But getting the state to act quickly is easier said than done.

A Cameroonian law passed in 1994 states that communities have the right to apply to the Ministry of Forests and Fauna for a community forest, which they can log for commercial use. The community forests often butt up against the massive logging concessions leased to international companies. The law states that of the taxes paid by the timber companies ($80 per acre per year), 50 percent should go to the state treasury, 40 percent to the department, and 10 percent to the villages that border timber concessions. And some concessions are tens of thousands of acres.

But for years, villages have been caught between a rock and a hard place, not able to get their community forests authorized or benefit from the logging taxes paid to the state. This is where Catholic Relief Services comes in. A project in partnership with the Diocese of Batouri is teaching 25 communities their rights.

Though the project has the support of Cameroon's national government, it doesn't sit well with some local bureaucrats who strike quiet deals with loggers and do little to help villages.

On paper, the community forest process looks deceptively simple: Submit a dossier with the required documents, including a forest management plan and a list of the members of the management committee, to the state's delegate in Batouri. But in practice, Rene Kata will tell you, it's not so simple. He's the president of the Dimako I community forest committee.

"The complexity of our administration doesn't permit us to access certain things," says Rene, choosing his words carefully. The complexity is literal and figurative.

'A Wrench in the Process'

Julien Ebalé, who heads the community forestry project in Batouri, says that revenue from timber companies is getting to Batouri. But from there, it doesn't make it down to the council level.

"Some elites want to throw a wrench in the process," says Julien. The reason: Some people are involved in illegal logging and don't want to see the community forest project succeed.

Beneath the bureaucracy are the expenses. In the dossier submitted to the ministry, maps must be included as well as an inventory of trees. That takes money for consultants. Meetings must be held, fuel purchased for motorcycles to go to the meetings, photocopies made of the meeting minutes. Once a file has been authorized and the community forest is ready for artisanal logging, a $22,000 investment is needed for equipment and other expenses. For a village of subsistence-level cassava farmers, all of this is a pipe dream.

Aurelie Nyapeye, who manages the community forest program for CRS, says the biggest problem is the bureaucracy and administration. She should know. She left the Ministry of Forests and Fauna to come work for CRS. Multiple signatures are required from government officials who never seem to be available. Meeting after meeting is held with no results.

She says villages' files are held up in the ministry. The message, all Cameroonians know, is clear: a little money—known as gombo or dammé here—will help push your dossier through the system.

But Aurelie knows the game and refuses to play it. The last few weeks she's been chasing eight files that suddenly went missing at the ministry. She went straight to department heads and didn't mince words. The situation was resolved.

Sharing Information…and Power

But for villagers in Dimako I, it's not easy fighting against government officials who are used to little oversight from Yaounde, Cameroon's capital, or resistance from the community.

A recent case happened in Ndélélé, a community not far from Dimako I. CRS helped the village prepare its documents for the mayor, including projects that would improve the village. The mayor repeatedly told them that he had no money for village projects. But the state newspaper reported that the official amount of money that had been allotted to that area was some $540,000. The village attached the numbers with the project.

"The mayor was furious," says Aurelie. He banned all CRS activities in Ndélélé. But with the government of Cameroon financing and supporting CRS' community forest project, Aurelie has no hesitation to go talk to him. She will meet with him later this month.

For Julien, the project is really about the fundamentals of democracy, simply informing villagers of their rights.

If the community forest project hadn't started, he says, "villages would have never known the [1994] law even exists. They would have never known the opportunities that exist to them. There's a real lack of information."

Back in Dimako I, Simon Pierre is now a free man. He was eventually released by his neighbors after some negotiation. He's still on the patrol team, but they haven't come across any illegal logging since last year's encounter.

He shows off some of the other items the forest produces. Bush yams, plants that are natural aphrodisiacs, and medicinal plants. He points out the traps the villagers use to catch bush meat, one of their only sources of protein.

His village needs one more signature and then they will officially have their community forest and can start the lucrative logging, which may happen as early as June. On their list of priorities: two new classrooms, a well and a health center.

With CRS' help, they should have all of these. It only took two and a half years. In Cameroon, that's record time.

Lane Hartill is the West Africa regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. He is based in Dakar, Senegal.