The Rainforests of Cameroon - PROFOR

Ten Years of Forest Sector Reform 119which more sustainable management practices and competent institutionsenable forest resources to benefit society and the environment.The Unfinished AgendaThe unfinished agenda is considerable and ever changing. It will need toadapt to new realities as new policy achievements and new policy failuresemerge.Address the Needs of Indigenous PeoplesSpecial measures are required for indigenous people to participate inand benefit from forest reforms. The government’s Indigenous PeoplesDevelopment Plan (IPDP) seeks to mitigate risks for indigenous peoplesunder Cameroon’s 2003 Forest and Environment Sector Program, includingthe loss of control over land that indigenous people traditionally usedas a source of livelihoods; loss of the cultural and social identities associatedwith those lands; increased marginalization; increased dependenceon other groups; exclusion from the local, decentralized system of forestadministration; reduced assistance from government services; andreduced capacity to defend their legal rights.Described as the “first major Central African forest policy documentspecifically addressing indigenous peoples’ needs” (Jackson 2004:5), theIPDP envisions a number of corrective actions to give indigenous communitiesmore secure rights to land and resources, especially by givinglegal status to indigenous settlements, recognizing their traditional userights, giving them greater access to markets for forest products, providingnew community forests and hunting zones where those rightsapply, ensuring greater representation of all marginalized groups withinlocal forest management institutions, and improving indigenous peoples’access to forest revenues for their benefit and that of the land they use(box 6.1) (Jackson 2004; Bigombe Logo 2008).Give Greater Attention to Impacts on Local Markets, Small Firms,and EmploymentInternational markets may be larger and financially more important thanlocal ones, but continued Delivered inattention by The World Bank to local e-library markets to: has significantThe World Banksocial implications and can undermine IP : 192.86.100.34 forest sector performance andgovernance in many important Mon, 09 ways. Nov 2009 17:06:18As noted, the emergence of Cameroon’s informal sector has more todo with the change of relative prices and the progressive impoverishment(c) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank