By Adrienne Engono Epse Moussang and Bongben Leocadia Jisi
Community forestry was designed as a community empowerment tool but has largely become a vehicle for elite capture and continued deforestation due to implementation failures.
Established by the 1994 Forest Law to promote sustainable forest management and improve local livelihoods, community forests in Cameroon have delivered mixed results in 31 years. While some communities report tangible benefits, systemic challenges persist, largely due to limited technical and financial support, complex bureaucratic procedures, and high costs of required documentation. This investigation focuses on community forests in Messamena and Ngoyla in Cameroon’s East Region.
On April 7, 2026, about 200 residents of Nemeyong II village, a two-hour motorcycle ride from Messamena in Cameroon’s East Region, gathered amid uncertainty from the suspension of logging in their community forest. Madame Edjap stayed in her kitchen, frying doughnuts for sale, despite the gloom that had settled over the community as others pondered opportunities for a new start.
Nemeyong II residents have had a taste of community forestry benefits – the improvement of their daily lives over two logging cycles. “Managing our forest has helped us carry out projects, bringing life to the village. We paid a teacher at our public school at a rate of FCFA 25,000 ($43.72) per month for a year; installed solar streetlights illuminating the village; bought 40 roofing sheets each for 17 households; closed the openings and cemented the floor of our community hall,” lists Jean-Claude Cyrille Mamoho Edjap, chairman of the management committee of the 1,385 ha community forest managed by Lil Mpeme Common Initiative Group (CIG).
Community forests are non-permanent forest domains not exceeding 5,000 hectares, attributed to village communities that apply and obtain a two-year (non-renewable) provisional convention with the government. The community elaborates a Simple Management Plan, SMP (a basic 5–10 year forest management blueprint required for legal logging), and is granted an Annual Logging Permit, ALP (an authorisation renewed every year for a permanent convention of 25 years, renewable). As of 2020, Cameroon had 762 community forests according to the Cameroon Forest Atlas, and they spanned about 1.7 million hectares, 7 per cent of the 34 million hectares of Cameroon’s total forest area.
The logging period in Nemeyong II was equally a favourable time for women who improved their own businesses. “The company vehicle took us to the forest, where we gathered non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and sold them to buyers in the community. We ran food stalls and transformed some NTFPs into oils to add value, says Laurentine Biwélé Evina, a member of the community forest management committee and president of the CIG, Femmes Exemplaires (Exemplary Women).
The same surge was observed in the Ngoyla council, where WWF Cameroon helped facilitate the creation of community forests. “We have carried out projects, including electrification and improvement of housing for community members, and built a house of worship and market stalls,” noted Armand Nkpwala Djioh and Clément Nkwala, respectively chairmen of the 3,433-hectare Codongnko and the 400-hectare Etekessa community forests.
WWF supported both financially and technically the creation of 100 community forests in four landscapes: the Tri-national (TNS), TRIDOM, Kudu Zombo, and the Coastal Forest Programme. Presently, given the meagre budget, assistance is limited to 10 community forests managed by the Baka indigenous people and women in the Yokadouma, Moloundou, and Mintom areas of the East and South regions,” explains Alphonse Ngniado Wouala, WWF Forest and BIODEV Coordinator. Mepolo Ethene, a Baka member of the Ndenbeh community forest in the Mintom South region, says, “Within the provisional period, demarcation is underway to carve out portions for farming and logging.”
A short-lived joy
In Ngoyla, WWF’s dwindling support has plunged some community forests without financial resources into difficulties. They are obliged to source funding to obtain the SMP at FCFA 5 million ($8693) or FCFA 2 million ($3477) to obtain an ALP from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, MINFOF. This financial instability is caused by logging profits becoming a source of conflict and division rather than a driving force for progress; meanwhile, the forest vanishes, and the coffers are back in the red. “Community members accuse logging operators of violating agreed terms, exceeding harvest limits, and cutting undersized trees. But Patrick Ateba, Executive Secretary of the Cameroon Timber Industry Group (GFBC), says there are cases of unscrupulous operators who engage in fraudulent logging, which is the reason he is calling for reform in this sector. Moreover, the meagre funds the partners provide create internal problems within the villages,” laments William Ndongmo, an expert in forest resource management at an environmental conservation organisation (Programme d’appui à l’élevage et de préservation de la biodiversité) (PAPEL) based in Messamena. Financial partners who are solely concerned with their own interests exhibit all types of deceit and avarice. “We have piles of abandoned (Ekan) timber used to build bridges and railroads. We offered it to a Vietnamese operator, but the dimensions didn’t match because they prefer much larger logs than ours (3.50 metres), Lil Mpeme’s chairman explains.
Internal disagreements within the community have prevented the timber from being transported, stalling operations. Ankotchy Mbo’obo Eugene Leon Clovis, opposing the present committee, explains, “The management committee is made up of foreigners; some of them are not from the village. Nemeyong village consists of five main families, and in the bureau, only about two families were represented. With constant management complaints, I took the initiative to have our community forest suspended.” He says the solution is for the five families to dialogue and decide who should be part of the bureau, then call on the local authorities to lift the suspension. Youths in Nemeyong II express fear following the deaths of several management committee members, which they link to disputes over forest revenues. “We have reached a point where many people, like myself, can no longer get involved in managing this community forest. I am in favour of preserving it to sell carbon credits,” says Yves Mebia, secretary-general of the management committee, a nephew who grew up in Nemeyong II. This view is shared by Gaïtan Mabé Mabé, youth representative in the Nemeyong II community forest management committee. Besides the problems, the village has returned to poverty. “Since the logging suspension, we have fallen back into a state of poverty worse than what we experienced before. Without logging, there is no activity in the village,” laments women’s leader Evina.
Beyond the financial challenges
Dr Samuel Nguiffo, Executive Secretary of the Center for Environment and Development (CED), says the community forestry model has largely underperformed, with significant responsibility lying with the government for failing to provide promised technical support. Nguiffo says, “For SMP, communities spent more than FCFA 15 million ($26,079). Villages turned to forestry businesses. The government forced impoverished communities to turn to logging companies, while wealthy and powerful individuals in the community, who provided the funds, made decisions. The latter hired logging companies and had to recover the money spent on logging, igniting conflict while the forest vanished.”
Nguiffo further questions why the focus was on logging and not ecotourism and why a company is given three years of logging to finance its SMP in a Forest Management Unit (FMU) area designated for industrial logging concessions covering millions of hectares, while a village community must provide all current documentation before the start of logging. He says the government failed to provide the promised free technical assistance and questions why the government should now punish communities for failing to manage their forest as a result of its own mistake.
Nguiffo laments that “government-empowered commercial companies altered data and gave misleading information; they would allow the harvesting of 30,000 m³ of timber from a community forest, with less wood resulting in timber trafficking. Thus, loggers had to steal wood from other sources to complete the required amounts; as a result, community forests began to degrade.” Ngniado shares the same view, adding that “Community forests non-compliant with the current regulation of the sustainable management measures contained in the SMP – where logging has been irregular, where plot boundaries have not been respected, or where managers have sold waybills to illegal loggers to launder timber – have contributed to the degradation of community forests.” Meanwhile, research carried out in three community forests shows they are degrading, with more than 65 per cent converted to cocoa farms and other agricultural uses in the Grand Mbam Centre region of Cameroon, a similar situation in other community forests located in cocoa production zones,” says Divine Foundjem Tita, researcher at the Center for International Forestry Research/World Agroforestry, CIFOR/ICRAF.
Correcting the Course
While community forestry is the only way for active participation of members, with a say in management, conception and implementation were skewed. “Community forests were created without sensitisation on management and a rush with the sole idea being timber exploitation.” Community forest governance failure is no secret to the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, MINFOF, which acknowledges the interference of certain rich and influential persons in the community, who, having secured funding, seek to monopolise everything.
“Of the 830 (767 in the forest atlas) community forests established across Cameroon’s ten regions, only 300 still exist. Community forests seem to be functioning better in parts of the Northwest region and in the East region with the support of international NGOs, states Charles Ndifor Nchamcham, forestry unit at MINFOF, while indicating that community forests vary in relation to the ecological zone. Following these observations, MINFOF decided to revisit the policy through a revision of attribution norms and procedures of the community forest management manual to align with community forestry dynamism. Thanks to financial support from the United Kingdom, the manual was revised. “By revising management standards and procedures to adapt them to the new dynamics, new pricing schedules will now be set based on ecological and climatic zones. We will be able to have forests offering services such as ecotourism, natural resource conservation, and carbon sequestration. It will no longer be solely about timber harvesting,” Nchamcham notes.
The next step is to sensitise the population that community forestry is not only about logging but also about the preservation of natural resources. Community forests that wish to start afresh will be given the opportunity but must respect the new system. Nchamcham reveals that the two-year provisional concession period, during which communities operate without an SMP, is a window to source finances to pay for the plan. “There is a reflection on how to turn the two years into a certification period to evaluate factors like development and environmental protection as a prerequisite for the signing of a permanent concession,” he adds.
A management committee will be put in place in about a year with representatives from MINFOF, the relevant local municipality, and the community, and for every violation, managers will be held accountable in court, as funds derived from the management of community forests are public funds. “Contracts will be signed, and managers reevaluated and subjected to yearly control of resources and projects; if not respected, they are liable to judicial pursuit,” Nchamcham states. “No community forest can be converted into a forest management unit, especially since it is classified as a non-permanent domain. The second-generation computerised forest information management system, SIGIF II, in 2022, does not permit illegal logging. Timber may be cut illegally, but only for local sale,” he maintains.
Conservation and carbon services as a way forward
Henri Mevaa, PAPEL Coordinator, who has contributed to the creation of community forests, acknowledges that the success of this initiative in its early stages was thanks to NGO and government funding. But, he says, procedures have become increasingly cumbersome over the years. “Every year, annual logging permits are required. Communities indicate difficulties with SIGIF II, since the data must be obtained through an online platform. Besides, in remote areas, the internet connection is irregular, and communities require outside expertise to manage their accounts. On the operational premise, there are governance issues, illegal logging, and logging partnerships with private operators who take a portion of the community forests’ revenue. In short, community forestry in Cameroon is really in a slump.”
Mevaa is convinced that “the carbon initiative – payments for keeping forests standing instead of cutting them – is the way forward, not only for the fight against climate change but also for local development. Ndongmo and Nguiffo agree to the carbon initiative; however, it is slow to take shape because regulations in Cameroon have not evolved sufficiently. He identified grey areas, such as who owns the carbon, the quotas, and who is the carbon credit issuer, as among the issues to examine. He suggests, “We want to see carbon projects succeed, for people to preserve their forests and receive benefits for their efforts. This is possible because they will set aside specific areas for different purposes.
Although reforestation is required by law, communities lack partners to finance such projects, and visible governance challenges in the forestry sector occur within community forests. In the permanent categorisation (FMUs and forest reserves), the owner, who has to pay annual taxes, limits access, while the protected areas have restricted access,” states William Dongmo.
According to Ngnaido, community forests’ existence depends on finding answers to environmental and biodiversity problems, such as combating climate change, biodiversity loss, and subpar living conditions for local people. “We must prioritise biodiversity conservation, enhance the regulatory framework, and diversify revenue streams for local and indigenous groups,” the WWF expert concludes.
“This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.”