Management conflicts in Cameroonian community forests

Cameroonian community forests were designed and implemented to meet the general
objectives of forest management decentralisation for democratic and community
management. The spread of management conflicts all over the country have shown
that these broad expectations have not been met. We describe conflicts occurring
in 20 community forests by types of actors and processes involved. We argue that
a number of external (community vs. external actors) and internal
(intra-community) conflicts are part of the causes blocking the expected outcome
of Cameroonian community forests, fostering bad governance and loss of
confidence. Rent appropriation and control of forest resources appear as
systemic or generalised conflicts. While community forest support projects have
tended to focus on capacity building activities, less direct attention has been
given to these systemic problems. We conclude that some factors like appropriate
leadership, and spending of logging receipts on collective benefits (direct and
indirect) are needed to minimise conflicts. Government and development agencies
should concentrate efforts on designing concrete tools for improving financial
transparency while privileging communities with credible leaders.