Councils and local communities living around Cameroon’s massive and luxuriant forests are facing the challenge of illegal practices by forest exploiters that lead to huge financial, ecological and material consequences. Since the creation of the concept of ‘council forests’ by the January 1994 law on forests, wildlife and fisheries and the gazetting in June 2001 of the first council forest in Dimako, East region, some forest exploiters have gone on the rampage.
It was in a bid to provide councils with the necessary legal, whistle-blowing and other preventive tools that a two-day workshop started yesterday, November 14 in Yaounde. Organised by the Technical Centre for Council Forests, CTFC, the executing arm of the Association of Forest Councils in Cameroon, ACFCam, the workshop aims at identifying the fraudulent practices and offering adequate designing a road map that will lay down initiatives to eradicate fraudulent forest exploitation.
Taking advantage of the presence of the National Anti-corruption Commission, CONAC’s representative, Christian Onana, and other stakeholders, the councils listed cases of fraudulent practices observed in their council forests. These included unauthorised tree felling, fraudulent use of licences, abandonment of logs, inaccessible log parks, destruction of bridges and roads by timber trucks, destruction of vegetation, non-payment of logging royalties and collusion between illegal forest exploiters and some administrative and security officials.
“We will work towards establishing legal status for CPFs and encourage closer collaboration between CPFs and councils to attain objectives,” said the Director of CTFC, Bodelaire Kemajou in reaction to the complaints. He assured the participants that they will receive lectures on the regulatory framework on combating illegal logging and corruption in the forestry sector. The participants also learnt that CONAC receives reports of corrupt practices by telephone, e-mail and in writing.
The workshop that ends today is organised under the ‘Support Programme to Council Forests in Cameroon’ PAF2C, a partnership between the State and ACFCam to strengthen the network of forest councils to assist in the process of decentralisation of management of natural resources. As at March 1, 2011, 12 council forests had been gazetted while ACFCam has a membership of 80 councils.
