Addressing Potential Conflict Using Participatory Mapping: Collection of Forest Foods From Timber Trees Around Industrial Concessions in Cameroon

Conservation of Tree Biodiversity and Sustainable Forest Management

“…FTA research on forest uses by men and women in dozens of villages in Cameroon, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Tieguhong et al 2017) showed that local people depend on forest foods, including both plants and animals. Scientists analyzed the density and abundance of forest resources and found that extracting both industrial timber and forest foods from trees could be sustained from the same concession if users followed clear guidelines and negotiated agreements to reduce conflicts (Tieguhong et al 2017;Maukonen et al 2020). Expanding the number of resources managed and extracted from concessions would increase the benefits per hectare as well as the number of beneficiaries.…”

“…Large expanses of tropical forest in Central Africa are under legal concession arrangements with industrial timber producers. FTA research in the Congo Basin illustrated the importance of forest foods to the nutrition and livelihoods of people in Central Africa and explored the potential to manage concessions in a way that sustains both timber yields and access to food products from trees by local communities (Fungo et al 2016;Maukonen et al 2020;Muvatsi et al 2021). These studies were carried out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon and Cameroon to evaluate the degree of potential conflict between timber production and harvesting forest foods (fruits and edible caterpillars) from tree species that are important for the timber trade.…”

“…Fungo et al (2020) found that these food sources are very important to the nutrition of rural people who live in forest environments, most of whom suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Maukonen et al (2020) show that most of the resources are collected within a relatively limited radius (circa 4 km) around villages. According to Muvatsi et al (2021), many of the resources can be obtained from trees that have not yet reached minimum felling diameter, meaning they are not threatened by industrial timber harvesting; however, because these trees are smaller, they also produce less fruit and host fewer caterpillars than trees large enough to be legally harvested.…”

“…Few quantitative studies have been conducted to determine the impact of logging on the ability of local populations to obtain NTFPs from the same forest sites. This FTA study (Maukonen et al 2020) focused on three species that provide important food products to villagers and are also valuable timber trees that are targeted by logging operations. The tree species were Baillonella toxisperma (moabi), producing an edible fruit and seed oil; Entandrophragma cylindricum (sapelli), which hosts caterpillars and larvae commonly consumed in Central Africa and is at the same time the second most important timber species in terms of volume exported; and Erythrophleum suaveolens (tali), which hosts another edible caterpillar species and is also a valued timber species, largely exported from Cameroon.…”

Advancing Gender Equality and Social Inclusion

“…For instance, analysis across 10 countries in Africa and Latin America shows that women's participation, especially when women sit on forest councils or attain leadership positions, is highly correlated with less disruptive conflicts, and that women are more likely to participate in these decision-making processes where education levels are higher and there is less income inequality (Coleman and Mwangi 2013). FTA's research in this area spans and is often comparative across various countries, including Indonesia, Nepal, India, Cameroon, Nicaragua and Uganda, revealing the exclusions from forest governance that are based on gender and other sources of inequality (Sunderland et al 2014;Chomba et al 2015;Colfer et al 2015a;Mukasa et al 2013;Elias et al 2020a;Maukonen et al 2020). In Nepal and other contexts, research has shown that high migration rates are reshaping forest access and governance through interlocking relations of gender, caste, class and ethnicity (Sijapati Basnett 2013; Hecht et al 2015).…”