The Rainforests of Cameroon - PROFOR

68 The Rainforests of Cameroon4 million hectares. It has also taken steps to develop and adopt managementplans to ensure their protection. Between 2003 and 2008, Cameroongreatly increased the effectiveness with which it manages protectedareas, and their management is increasingly linked to the managementof public and private adjoining areas. The strong provisions for communityinvolvement contained in recently developed management plans forthe protected areas of Campo Ma’an and of M’Bam and Djerem areencouraging.The financial sustainability of all of Cameroon’s protected areasremains weak, although efforts to integrate new conservation optionssuch as carbon offsets and conservation concessions may help.Community ForestsCommunity forestry made its appearance and developed rapidly throughthe reform period, but it remains very much a work in progress. Since1998, when the first community forest manual was prepared with the U.K.Department for International Development, more than 400 requests toestablish community forests have been made. Forests on 1.3 million hectareswere set aside, but community interests were often undermined byvested interests. Seventy-five community forests are now in operation.Different models of community forestry have been adopted, such assubcontracting industry to harvest community forests, restricting communityforest use, and permitting artisanal logging based on long-termharvesting cycles. Each of these models has limitations, and none hasworked better than the others. Burdensome, costly, and disempoweringregulations are among the most common causes of concern or failure.While much remains to be done, observers concur that communityforestry in Cameroon is 10 years ahead of similar efforts in other partsof Africa’s humid tropics and that lessons from Cameroon will be usefulto other countries (Julve and others 2007). Once the object of residualattention from institutions focused on industrial forestry, community forestryis now one of the most-funded forest subsectors.Illegal LoggingPrior to the late 1990s, Cameroon exhibited neither the political will northe law enforcement Delivered capacity by to The curb World illegal Bank e-library logging. to: Today the situation isThe World Bankquite different. There is solid evidence IP : 192.86.100.34 that illegal logging declined significantlyin absolute terms after Mon, 09 2002, Nov 2009 most 17:06:18 significantly in the permanentdomain, where forests are subject to management plans and adherence toplans is gradually taking root. Illegal logging now largely supplies domes-(c) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank