Presiding at the opening ceremony of the congress yesterday May 3, Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle said community forests constitute veritable sources of riches for both the government and local population. “We expect councils that have forests to understand that government is committed with working closely with them to ensure that we succeed together in the sustainable management of our forest. The future of sustainable forest management has as an essential element the involvement and implication of councils because they are local executives and with the powers they have got within the framework of decentralisation, the councils would be able to use these powers to ensure the sustainable management of our forests”, Prof Ngolle Ngolle said.
During the four-day congress (May 3 – 6), the participants from among others, Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Chad and Central African Republic are sharing their experiences and will probably come up with a sub-regional management plan for communal forests. Speaker after speaker advocated participatory management of the forest, insisting that the local population be the first people to benefit from forest royalties. “In the area of tree planting and forest regeneration, we would like that councils work in a way that the entire territory, 360 councils, would be able to create, own, manage and benefit from the forests that belong to them. With this, we can have all the councils of Cameroon become forest councils”, the Minister wished. Reason why government, he added, has signed conventions with the Association of Forest Councils, examples that the country is sharing with other countries during the congress.
