HOW TO INTEGRATE A GLOBAL ISSUE OF FOREST CONSERVATION WITH LOCAL INTERESTS : INTRODUCTION TO THE SATREPS PROJECT IN SOUTHEASTERN CAMEROON

Abstract

Conservation of tropical rainforests, with their rich biological diversity and high potentials for carbon sequestration, has become a major global issue. While Cameroon has witnessed an increase in the number of protected areas in the southeastern part of the country during the past 15 years, this has resulted in the restriction of access of local people to the forest. Since the new forest law in 1994, most parts of the forest in Cameroon have been divided either into protected areas, or forest management units subject to current or future logging operations. There is a growing conflict between the global issue of conservation and the interest of the local people in their livelihood. The Scientific and Technological Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS), a Japanese overseas cooperation project, addresses this issue through establishing a sustainable use of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) among the local people, which is compatible with the conservation of tropical forest. In this paper, the outline of the SATREPS project is described, and some of the interim outputs from the Projects are presented. IMPORTANCE OF THE FORESTS TO GLOBAL AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES Since the Lio Summit in 1992, conservation of biological diversity has attracted a global interest, and conservation of tropical rainforests, which accommodate rich biological diversity, has become a major global issue. Tropical rainforests in central Africa also play an important role of carbon sequestration, which is expected to mitigate the global climate change. In central Africa, these concerns have come out as massive movements toward conservation of the rainforests. Conservationists, such as WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) and other international NGOs have been actively promoting the projects, which aim at establishing protected areas for the forest ecosystem and faunal and floral diversity. In Cameroon, the Lobeke area in Eastern Province was declared a national park in 1999, following a recommendation from WWF. In the same year, a protected area of tri-national parks was formed, comprised of Lobeke in Cameroon, Dzanga-Sangha in Central African Republic, and Nouabale-Ndoki in Republic of Congo. To the west of Lobeke National Park, Cameroon and Gabon have been working on the Tridom project to create a tri-national interzone bordered by the Minkebe, Boumba-Bek, Nki, and Odzala National Parks and the Dja Wildlife Reserve. Projects such as these have created a network of protected areas over the last 15 years. The areas protected for wildlife conservation in Cameroon now cover more than 7 million hectares, accounting for 15% of national territory (Topa et al., 2009).