Legal Pluralism in the Rain Forests of South-eastern Cameroon

Abstract

Donor-sponsored rain forest management programmes in much of Africa have been characterised by social naiveté, inadequate understanding of local tenurial systems and use of ethnocentric socio-legal terminology. Common misconceptions of 'traditional' systems of resource rights and sociologically uncritical concepts of 'community' have hindered recognition of the complex, legally plural and changing nature of African forest tenure systems. Using two ethnographic cases drawn from the East Province of Cameroon, that of the Nzime and Baka peoples of Lomié Arrondissement and the Gbaya Boli of Bimba Canton, this chapter describes the socially differentiated patterns of rights to forest resources in these two areas and considers the local level impacts of Cameroon's new national forestry legislation and management plan. The new legal provisions for villagers to benefit from commercial logging taxes, as well as attempts to promote community forest management, have generated numerous conflicts at the village level, as competing local interests attempt to assert more exclusive rights to forest resources in the face of more inclusivist kinship-based modes of usage. In these contexts, actors have drawn on multiple tenurial notions to substantiate their claims and to exclude others. Moreover, Baka people, due to their lack of an effective political voice, have been unable to use their longstanding relations with the more politically articulate Nzime to benefit from logging concession income. The case studies demonstrate the complexity of systems of resource tenure in the societies of the forest zone of Cameroon and emphasise the necessity for forest management initiatives to begin to recognise and engage with more nuanced understandings of social order, accountability, collective action and political competition if they are not to continue their track-record of failure.