Abstract
Forest certification is one of the best known voluntary environmental programs for sustainable forest management in the world today. The main objective of this study is to assess the role of forest certification in forest management in Cameroon. Primary and secondary research approaches were used to sought data and information from relevant governmental legislation and reports, certification systems website as well as interviews with staffs of the ministry, forest concessions and certification schemes. Analysis revealed that the number of Forest Management Units in Cameroon increased from 105 in 2004 to 120 in 2019 while surface area increased from 6,961,700 hectares to 7,073,056 hectares. The results also indicated that the number of concessions certified by FSC increased from 1 in 2005 to 9 certificates in 2010 and to 18 in 2014. The number later dropped to 16 in 2015, 13 in 2017 and 7 in 2019. The FSC certified surface area increased from 820,630 hectares in 2012 to 1,013,374 hectares in 2013/2014 and a drastic drop to 940,945ha in 2015. The peak period was from June-November 2017 with 1,130,301 hectares while in 2018/2019 the surface area reduced to 341,708 ha. Many factors impeded the growth of forest certification in the Cameroon.
Highlights
A number of efforts have been adopted in an attempt to curb the problem of forest degradation and deforestation, which stands tall among the major environmental and social concerns [1,2,3]
Forest Management Units (FMUs) were created under the Law N° 94/01 of 20th January 1994 laying down the forest code in Cameroon
FMUs are forest management units zoned within the Permanent Forest Domain
Summary
A number of efforts have been adopted in an attempt to curb the problem of forest degradation and deforestation, which stands tall among the major environmental and social concerns [1,2,3]. Between 2000 and 2003 alone, the area of certified forests worldwide doubled to approximately 150 million hectares [4, 3]. The United Nations estimates that 355 million hectares of forests has been certified globally, approximately nine per cent of the total global forest area. Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC) certification covers 230 million hectares and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifies around 135 million hectares in the world [5]. The number of certified forest management units covered by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification increased from 48 in 2012 to 53 in 2019 while the number of chain of custody certificates increased from 140 within the same periods [7, 8]
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