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The governance of nature as development and the erasure of the Pygmies of Cameroon

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Abstract

The Pygmies are among the remaining ‘savages’ in West and Central Africa. This paper demonstrates how the governance of nature through sedentarization, the creation of national parks as a mechanism of forestry conservation and the failure to endorse standard environmental safeguards in the creation of the Tchad-Cameroon pipeline project have led to the devastation of the livelihood of the indigenous pygmies. Simultaneously, by categorizing the Pygmies as a ‘primitive other’ despite the very dynamism of the concept of culture, the state of Cameroon has excluded them from the benefits of postmodernist development. I demonstrate that projects aimed at modernizing them, and achieving sustainability have instead accentuated their exclusion because of their presumed cultural isolation, led to their deep entrenchment in poverty and resulted in complete erasure. The failure of these projects is due to the clash between global and local perspectives and interests over the Western protectionism and nature aesthetics that underpin conservation and development schemes, and the government’s failure to ensure that developers fulfill their obligations to affected communities, as well as the non-recognition of the multiplex relationships between hunter-gatherers and farmers that is based on cultural, historical and political ecology. Against this backdrop, development has thus, become a process of erasure in which the livelihood of the Pygmies has been balkanized and their cultural existence and identity, negated.

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Notes

  1. Cameroon’s Troubled Timber Industry Discussion with Samuel Nnah Ndobe and Chris Allan Taped Spring, 2007, Last accessed, October 30, 2011 at http://www.greengrants.org/pdf/cameroontimber.pdf.

  2. Cameroon’s Troubled Timber Industry Discussion with Samuel Nnah Ndobe and Chris Allan Taped Spring, 2007. Last accessed, 30th October, 2011 http://www.greengrants.org/pdf/cameroontimber.pdf.

  3. Apart from the Chad-Cameroon pipeline corridors where the Baka and the Bakola benefit from a specific anti-AIDS programme, it is uncertain if Pygmies in other regions of Cameroon enjoy such attention, despite their specific vulnerabilities.

  4. See the film produced by FPP entitled Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas: From principles to practice. www.forestpeoples.org.

  5. Decree No.95-531-PM of August 23, 1995 is the implementation decree specifying details of the 1994 forestry law. Together, the 1994 law and its implementation decree laid out a new classification of forests and forest titles, logging rights and conditions and norms for management of forests in Cameroon. One of the main objectives of the forest policy is to increase the involvement and participation of local people in managing forest resources. A major tool for acquiring this goal is the provision of the allocation of community forests. A detailed manual clarifies the procedures and standards for the allocation and management of community forests. The Law and its implementation decree made Cameroon the first country in Central Africa to plan concession allocation through open competitive bidding. The first round took place in 1997. Forest concessions are through a tender process for a period of 15 years and require the elaboration of a forest management plan which is approved by the administrative authority.

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  1. Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta

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Pemunta, N.V. The governance of nature as development and the erasure of the Pygmies of Cameroon. GeoJournal 78, 353–371 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-011-9441-7

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