1,720,982 research outputs found
Is decentralization in natural resource management leading to livelihoods improvement and sustainability?: evidence from Central Africa
No full textSince 1990, Central African States have made profound natural resource policy reforms. One of the main orientations of these reforms is known today as the ‘decentralization’ of forest management processes within a long lasting context of ‘complex political ecology’. This essay examines the effects of this policy change on livelihoods and forest sustainability. It shows that contrary to what was planned by policy-makers and what was expounded by several theorists, decentralization in forest management and related financial benefits is not yet synonymous with the improvement of livelihoods, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability. On the ground, there are, by and large, very few positive socio-economic outcomes. In conclusion, the author proposes some enabling conditions for an effective link between decentralization and improved livelihood
Usages culturels de la foret au Sud-Cameroun: rudiments d'ecologie sociale et materiau pour la gestion du pluralisme
No full textBased on social ecology, anthropological and policy research conducted on social dimension of natural resources management in Cameroon, this contribution liberates a given number of findings: 1. local communities in Cameroon have both an horizontal (practical) and a vertical (metaphysical) perception of the forest; 2. in the course of the time, they have been manipulating forest resources for cultural uses at the two levels. In that sense, cultural manipulation of forest resources is showing beneath popular narration, withcraft, toponymy and ritual orders. These cultural construction need to be carefully and meaningfully, captured and chanelled in the implementation of Programs and policy design. Because local systems are resilient and can not be emarginated successfully in the issue of forest management, the author calls for a cultural adjustment
The foundations of the conflit de langage over land and forest in southern Cameroon
No full textWhen Germans colonized Cameroon in the nineteenth century, most of the ethnic groups living in the forest zone had already established territories. However, Germany then became the legal owner of land and forests. This brutal cohabitation of the new version of the state and customary systems of territorial management generated serious problems and has continued to this day in post-independence Cameroon. Among these problems, this paper focuses on the conflit de langage (conflict of language or of discourse) between the state and local communities on land and forests ownership and on the regulation of access to natural resources. This article reconstructs the foundations of this conflit de langage, by revealing elements such as the exclusion of indigenous systems and the requirements of capitalist accumulation. The author explores various property rights formation processes and forestry legislations (German, British, French and post-independence). The article points out how the situation has worsened through the creation of forest concessions on customary lands, the creation of protected areas, the sharing of revenues from commercial logging, the establishment of agroindustries, and oil compensation
Acteurs locaux, representation et politics des eco-pouvoirs dans le Cameroun rural post-1994
No full textOne of the major innovations in Cameroon’s forest industry is the devolution of management authority to local communities. These communities have viewed this shift as a response to their age-old demands — and frustrations — regarding profits from commercial harvesting of forests on their land base. The creation of community forests, local exploitation of those forests, and management of the income generated by sales of logs and timber, on the one hand, and access to forms of forest taxes by village communities, on the other hand, are significant factors in this change. The following lines briefly describe the basic mechanisms for this transfer of power over “nature and money.” They then explore the results generated by the “powers game” and local politics before assessing the role of local representatives — management committees — in the dynamics at work. Finally, working from the assumption that the observed limits arise to a large extent from the lack of benchmarks for decentralized management, the author proposes a research approach generally based on identifying indicators for monitoring the exercise of powers over the forest environment and forestry revenue
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Incidences des mutations socio-economiques sur les activites economiques traditionnalles et sur l'ecosysteme forestier
No full textAssessing accountability in Cameroon's local forest management: are representatives responsive?
No full textInstitutional deficit, representation, and decentralized forest mangement in Cameroon: elements of natural resource sociology for social theory and public policy
No full textConducted in the East, South, and Northwest Provinces, this study aims to provide an explanation and understanding of the organizational and institutional infrastructure of decentralized management of Cameroon’s forest—also referred to as “local forest management”—and the mechanisms of the transfer of powers and responsibilities to decentralized entities. It shows that in Cameroon’s forestry domain, the institutional arrangements necessary for local management of common pool resources are either nonexistent or insufficient, hence the notion of “deficit.” The study demonstrates that the Cameroonian model of decentralization of forest management is, in the end, an interrupted process, blocked mid-way to fruition by forces on the regional level (mid-level actors) and by a village elite. The findings give rise to a theory of deviation and of a pattern of regional “capture” of forestry localism and decentralized management. The central State, having failed to establish regulation mechanisms and an approach to monitor the process in all its length seems to have been caught short, leaving decentralization in the hands of networks and mid-level actors whose primary interest is financial gain. This shift permits the diversion of forest governance and the setup of legal “gangsterism” in a field where corruption and abuse of power was already deeply entrenched. This study also enumerates different forms of instrumentalization of decentralized management of Cameroon’s forests, as well as the indicators of socio-economic and ecological counter-performance linked to current social and institutional arrangements
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