The Rainforests of Cameroon - PROFOR

CHAPTER 1The Historic andEnvironmental ContextThe barriers to placing Cameroon’s forests at the service of the country’speople, its economy, and the environment have been under constructionfor more than 100 years. Commercial logging was initiated duringthe colonial period in the 1880s and expanded after the 1920s. Sinceindependence in 1960, the interaction of commercial timber firms andgovernment civil servants within Cameroon’s system of political patronageand influence has shaped the role of forests in the country’s economy.Since 1980, timber has been Cameroon’s second-largest source of exportrevenue after petroleum, accounting for some 25 percent of the country’sforeign exchange—far exceeding any other agricultural commodity.These deeply entangled commercial and political interests have onlyrecently—and reluctantly—started to diverge. The economic crisis of1985 unleashed a series of changes, including structural adjustment,democratization, and decentralization, which inevitably affected forestsand forest policy. More specifically, in 1994 the government introducedan array of forest policy reforms, both regulatory and market based. Thesereforms changed the rules determining who could gain access to forestresources, how those resources could be used, and who would ostensiblybenefit from their use. Delivered As the by The reforms World Bank came e-library into to: effect, long- standingThe World Bankeconomic, social, and environmental IP : 192.86.100.34 perspectives on forest resourcesbegan to shift in complex Mon, and 09 not Nov always 2009 17:06:18 predictable ways. More than adecade later, the reforms remain incomplete, but progress is evident in a13(c) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank