The Rainforests of Cameroon - PROFOR

106 The Rainforests of Cameroonforest where rural communities have traditionally gathered forest products.Depending on how these rights are handled among the variousstakeholders, the result can be conflict (over hunting or for gathering ofsome nontimber products associated with commercial trees) or peacefulcoexistence and mutual benefit.Bureaucratic and regulatory barriers remain. The path to creating acommunity forest remains challenging, slow, and costly to travel. TheForest Administration intrudes excessively in local decision making andmanagement. Requests to create a community forest can take from 1.5to 5 years to study and approve, and the subsequent cost of developingand gaining approval of a management plan is expensive, ranging from$2,800 to $32,000 (CFAF 1.4 million to 16 million) (Lescuyer, NgoumouMbarga, and Bigombe Logo 2008). The inventory of forest resourcesrequires a high level of technical skill, and the results are rarely used indeveloping the simple management plan. Thus, no community can establishits rights to a forest without technical and financial assistance froman NGO or some other external entity, raising the risk that these externalactors will take control of the process away from communities. Far fromencouraging sustainable forest management, these deficiencies have encouragedthe spread of illegal activity in community forests.In some cases, the challenge of finding 5,000 hectares of contiguousforest land has led neighboring villages to present joint applications.This approach facilitates the creation of community forests, but disputesbetween villages are common and the risk of breaking agreements high.Generating significant income from community forests has proven difficult.Whether communities decide to focus on timber or on other forestproducts, it is proving difficult for them to draw a significant livelihood(legally) from community forestry.Communities are free to manage their forests for a wide variety ofpurposes. Communities may decide not to exploit timber and focus onnontimber forest products, but they rarely do so. Outside the narrowboundaries of the community forest (in rural areas and forest concessions),communities can gather large quantities of products other thantimber, either freely or Delivered with easily by The World obtained Bank permission, e-library to: when this activityThe World Bankis compatible with using the forest IP : 192.86.100.34 to harvest wood. In other words, mostnontimber forest products Mon, do 09 not Nov need 2009 community 17:06:18 forests to grow or tobe harvested legally, and few communities see the need to clear numerousbureaucratic hurdles merely to formalize activities they have pursued for(c) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank