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Sustaining livelihoods around community forests. What is the potential contribution of wildlife domestication?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2013

Gertrud Buchenrieder  and
Roland Azibo Balgah
Gertrud Buchenrieder*
Affiliation:
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (IAEW), 06099, Halle (Saale), Germany
Roland Azibo Balgah*
Affiliation:
University of Bamenda, Faculty of Sciences, Bamenda, NW, Cameroon
*
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Community forest management is often advanced as a remedy for failing top-down approaches to nature conservation. Contingent on the property rights theory, it assumes that local participation in natural resource management results in sustainable structures. There is, however, insufficient empirical evidence on the intra-community dynamics – especially when households have unequal access to the local institutions managing the natural resource. This paper looks at the socio-cultural, economic and institutional situation of households with and without access to management institutions in communities around the Kilum-Ijim Mountain Forest in Cameroon and analyses whether livelihood differences are associated with variations in management patterns. The analysis reveals differences by household type and a mixed picture of the evolution of species in the community forests over time, questioning the role of the community in natural resource conservation. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potentials of wildlife domestication for livelihoods and conservation in forest communities. The results are important in the light of ongoing conservation efforts in natural resource hot-spots in sub-Saharan Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 57 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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Footnotes

*

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Foundation fiat panis in Ulm, Germany for the research project ‘Bridging the food and nutrition gap for hunger and poverty reduction. Understanding the dynamics and institutional framework for bushmeat in Cameroon’ (no. 30/2010). We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the paper for their insightful comments. Special thanks go to Mr Toh Lo-ah Clement, former ecological monitoring technician of the Kilum-Ijim and the Bamenda Highlands projects, for his great help in identifying and correctly naming different wildlife species found in the research region.

References

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