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From Farmers to Loggers: The Role of Shifting Cultivation Landscapes in Timber Production in Cameroon

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Abstract

This article focuses on timber sourced from the agricultural areas in the shifting cultivation landscapes of the Central Region of Cameroon. Data about volumes marketed in urban centres, harvesting operations and on-farm timber management are used to discuss the ecological impact of small-scale logging and its sustainability in the long term. An opportunistic association exists between small-scale logging and agricultural land uses, determined mostly by the abundance of valuable species in fallows and on cocoa farms, their easy accessibility and the low price of farmland timber. Farmers apply various strategies to the management of tree resources in fallows and cocoa agroforests, with most felling authorized in fallows and most trees preserved on the cocoa farms. With current agricultural expansion and intensification trends associated with small-scale logging, timber resources on rural land are at risk of depletion with direct consequences for domestic timber supply and the thousands of livelihoods it sustains. Marketing and regulatory changes are needed to encourage the integration of timber production in agricultural management systems.

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Notes

  1. Small-scale logging is defined as the artisanal chainsaw milling of selected trees that are then processed into planks on the felling site and manually transported and piled along access roads (described by Auzel et al. 2001).

  2. For a review of national case studies of artisanal logging in the NPFE, see Wit et al. (2010).

  3. Fallows are the primary component of shifting cultivation systems. Ecologically they are defined as complexes of secondary vegetation at various reconstitution phases, regenerating after the clearing of forest for agriculture (FRA 1998). They are important for the restoration of soil fertility after cropping, for weed control and for sustaining the livelihoods of households through a number of edible, drinkable, medicinal and timber products (Burgers et al. 2000).

  4. Timber exploitation permits are issued by the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife to registered operators for up to 1 year and a maximum volume of 500 m3.

  5. A Community Forest is defined as ‘a forest forming part of the NPFE, which is covered by a management agreement between a village community and the Forestry Administration’. It can have an area of up to 5,000 ha. All forest products from community forest management belong solely to the village communities concerned and can be traded. The community enjoys the use of the forest according to a Simple Management Plan that stipulates the beneficiary community, the CF boundaries and its main uses, a description of the forest, the operating program and forest and wildlife management instructions. The management plan lays the foundations for the management agreement between community and Ministry; it is usually planned for 25 years and must be revised every 5 years.

  6. The extent of the NPFE was calculated by the authors by subtraction, superposing in ArcGIS9.3 the Permanent Forest Domain map from GFW (GFW 2008) to the OFAC land cover map. The extent of the transport network was assessed using the spatial dataset of the Ministry of Public Works (2011).

  7. Thirty Community Forests were operating in the region in 2010, with an estimated annual maximum timber production of about 22,000 m3. No official data exist on logging permits issued in the region.

  8. A household is defined here as a unit formed by a married person, their unmarried children and other adult family members who share the same residence.

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Acknowledgments

The study on farmland trees was funded by the Fellowship Programme of the International Tropical Timber Organization (Ref. No. 071/04A) and hosted by the Central Africa Regional Office of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Data collection was also funded by the Dutch Directorate General of Development Cooperation (DGIS) ‘Illegal logging in Cameroon and Gabon: The international FLEGT process, national trends and local impact’ project, and the European Union financed the ‘PRO-Formal: Policy and regulatory options to recognise and better integrate the domestic timber sector in tropical countries in the formal economy’ project. Technical support from IFAD is also acknowledged. The views expressed do not, in any way, reflect the official position of the ITTO, IFAD, the European Union, DGIS or CIFOR. We thank Anne Branthomme from FAO for the access to the MINFOF-FAO Inventory data, and Diomede Manirakiza, Joachim Nguiebouri, Edouard Essiane Mendoula and Jean-Pamphile Ondoua for data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins (ASB), P.O. Box 2008, Messa, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Valentina Robiglio

  2. Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), P.O. Box 2008, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Guillaume Lescuyer & Paolo Omar Cerutti

  3. Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), 2572, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Guillaume Lescuyer

  4. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Paolo Omar Cerutti

Authors
  1. Valentina Robiglio
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  2. Guillaume Lescuyer
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  3. Paolo Omar Cerutti
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Correspondence to Valentina Robiglio.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Most marketed timber species in Cameroon

The FAO-MINFOF Inventory was used to obtain data about the species that are most marketed in Cameroon. For each species, volume and stand density were calculated for 80 plots covering the non-old growth forest classes in the inventory (i.e. the young secondary forest and agricultural areas) in Stratum 1, corresponding to the humid forest zone in Southern Cameroon. The total sampled area considered was 160 ha and included 85.42 ha of rural mosaic (Figs. 7, 8).

Fig. 7
figure 7

Estimated volume density of the most important commercial species in the Cameroon export and domestic sectors. Derived by the authors from inventory data in FAO–MINFOF (2007)

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Fig. 8
figure 8

Estimated stand density of the most important commercial species in the Cameroon export and domestic forest sectors. Derived by the authors from inventory data in FAO–MINFOF (2007)

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See Table 3.

Table 3 Main commercial tree species in Cameroon
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Robiglio, V., Lescuyer, G. & Cerutti, P.O. From Farmers to Loggers: The Role of Shifting Cultivation Landscapes in Timber Production in Cameroon. Small-scale Forestry 12, 67–85 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-012-9205-3

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