Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change:
Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

Takanori Oishi
Lecturer, African Studies Center–Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan

Abstract
As climate change risks enlarge, the environment is an ever more important framework to consider
when discussing global sustainability. In Africa, following the leadership of national and transnational economic communities, considerable effort is being made to establish regulations and legal
frameworks on environmental resource use, based on international conventions and laws. Suchinitiatives are often undertaken within a top-down initiative of ‘participatory’ and ‘community-based’
approaches, despite these concepts originally suggesting bottom-up tactics. However, such idealistic
approaches have been translated and introduced to regional and local contexts without sufficientconsideration for the unique local and social conditions. This then tends to be received in the local
context as enforcement, or an obligation, which may be cause for local conflicts. It is therefore criticalthat gaps between global environmental policy initiatives and their actualised efforts on the ground are
identified.
Taking examples from the tropical forest zone of southeastern Cameroon, I will report on how
environmental and rural development policies are impacting rural livelihoods, the social welfare of thelocal residents, and the forest landscape. I will then attempt to demonstrate micro-level governancechallenges from perspectives identified within the local society. Finally, while acknowledging thelimitations as an outsider, I will discuss what kind of research and practice can contribute to thepositive co-governance of natural resources between diverse actors, referring to the potential creationof a citizen science platform in Africa.

Key Words
environment policy, multi-layered governance, communication gap, minority rights, African tropicalforest― 83 ―

Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change: Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

1. Introduction
1-1. Climate Change Risks and Livelihood Sustainability: Global Discourse
The African tropical forest draws worldwide attention because it is believed to contribute to global
environment stability by stocking Green House Gases (GHGs) as a huge stock of carbon. From sucha viewpoint, conservation of various types of African tropical forests is regarded as an urgent priority,
considering that the globe is already excessing planetary boundaries for sustaining the ecosystem as awhole. The loss of tropical forests challenges the planet’s thresholds, especially seen in the decreaseof biodiversity and climate change. Most tropical forests remain in Western and Central Africa. The
Congo Basin especially harbours 170 million hectares of tropical forest, which contains the second
largest tropical forest in the world after Amazonia. Logging, mining, and biodiversity loss are the coreenvironmental threats against the Congo Basin forest ecosystems.
Global environmental issues have political as well as ecological facets. The aforementioned three
threats are all related to each other politically and economically: they are deeply linked to national
economic policy and global politics of development (Kitanishi 2010). For example, structuraladjustment enforced by the World Bank brought an increase of timber exportation in Cameroon(Burnham 2000). Logging increases wildlife and biodiversity loss by enhancing local demands and by
opening access between forest and urban areas (Auzel and Wilkie 2000).
Most of the forested zones in Congo Basin countries are less developed in state services. Logging
and mining industries provide employment, essential infrastructures, and access to the global market
in rural areas in forested zones (Figure 1). This condition makes the majority of local people accept
and even feel favourable towards these operations. The dilemma between conservation and ruraldevelopment represents a contradiction of the idea of ‘sustainable development’. Thus, what ischallenging in Africa is that the demands of both forest conservation and rural development should besatisfied under politically and economically vulnerable conditions.

Figure 1. Public route in bushy terrain (Photo: author)
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which emerged as
an international formal framework at COP 13 in 2008, adds economic incentives for developing
countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The idea of REDD came from the concept of Payment
for Environmental Services (PES). In addition to REDD, REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from― 84 ―

Takanori Oishi

Deforestation and Forest Degradation and the Role of Conservation, Sustainable Management ofForests and Enhancement of Forest Carbon Stocks in Developing Countries) also includes the actsof forest conservation, sustainable forest management, and increasing forest carbon biomass. Theinternational conservation discourse moved from project-based conservation approaches in theframework of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs) to REDD and REDD+(Blom et al., 2010). The global REDD framework will also incorporate tropical forest conservationand management into the next global change agreement (Angelsen 2008). Whereas its political andeconomic influence in forest sectors is large, the REDD concept is still not familiar to most African
citizens. Even among the elites who attend at meetings for REDD+ implementation, the meaningsof basic terms are not well understood. Stakeholders including the media, researchers, bureaucrats
and administrators, international organisation officers, and civil people did not hold enough basic
conceptual understanding related to climate change (Tiani, Bele, and Sonwa 2015).
1-2. Paradox of ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ in Environmental Policies
Preceding REDD and REDD+, plenty of participatory approach-based projects on local communities
have been initiated in African countries under the various synonyms of Integrated Conservation
and Development Projects (ICDPs), such as community-based natural resource management(CBNRM) and community-based wildlife management (CWM), in the last two decades. Since thelate 1980s diverse environmental policies have been introduced and promoted under the initiative of aparticipatory and community-based approach. This has reflected the turn in development theory froma ‘top-down’ to a ‘bottom-up’ approach. These bottom-up approaches were, however, implemented ina top-down way.
From a policy makers’ perspective, some of these policies succeeded, but many failed in various
ways. REDD+ can also fall into the same ‘pitfalls’ of past environmental policy enforcements
at local levels, so REDD+ policy makers need to learn from existing experiences (Blom et al.
2010). Community-based participation of local people contains paradoxes. Discussing community
participation, Robert Chambers (1983) put importance on ‘participation as end’ rather than‘participation as means’: the former aims to achieve autonomy and empowerment of the community
itself through development, whereas the latter aims to achieve particular developmental goals using
community participation. However, the reality falls short of the desire ‘participation as end’. In
Tanzania, for example, most participatory wildlife conservation approaches have failed to realise fullparticipation because they had prioritised the latter (Iwai 2016).
Since its beginning, ‘participation’ and ‘community’ have been almost fake in Cameroon, as
British anthropologist Barrie Sharpe criticised community forest implementation in southwestern
Cameroon during its very early stages. Sharpe showed that the concepts of ‘participation’ of local
people are not realised, and their ‘community’ is illusion at a local level (Sharpe 1998). Following
Sharpe, more than a few number of authors, including Burnham and Hattori, pointed out problems
related to community-based approaches to forest societies.
⃝ Definition of ‘community’ itself has caused the problem. Mobile and dynamic characteristics ofAfrican rural societies are not necessarily compatible with the static image of community (Sharpe1998).
Inequality
in decision-making processes. The culturally and politically heterogenetic composition⃝of the community often results in the exclusion of minorities from decision-making processes.

― 85 ―

Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change: Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

Silent stakeholders remain out of discussion and information sharing (Burnham 2000).
⃝ Benefit sharing provokes conflict and discrimination. Benefits from concessions of logging
companies, sports hunting agencies, etc. are controlled by local authorities or local dominant
people and are unfairly distributed (Hattori 2005, 2014).
1-3. Aim of the Presentation
Summarising these reports, the so-called participatory approach barely facilitated dialogue between
different actors, both at the ‘community’ and at the sub-national level. Rather, these initiatives brought
local conflicts. Thus this paper aims to explore (1) how we can leap beyond these paradoxes between
knowledge (concept) production and practice, and (2) how we can contribute to sustaining local
livelihoods through what kind of participation we engage in from an African area studies perspective.
2. Research Area
2-1. Cultural Diversity in Cameroonian Forest Scape
Cameroon accommodates more than 250 linguistic groups in different ecological landscapes, including
the savannah and tropical forests. The southeastern part of the country is covered with dense tropicalforest vegetation, which constitutes a part of the northwestern ridge of the Congo Basin. The African
tropical forest has been an internal frontier in the continent since the Bantu expansion started somethousands of years ago.
In the Congo Basin forest, there inhabit a dozen groups of hunter-gatherers who are first
inhabitants. From the past to present, the tropical forest provides refuge for various peoples in times of
warfare and violence. Diverse peoples come into the forest and encounter the others. Anthropologists
have demonstrated that it has also been a sociocultural interface that allows different peoples ofvarious origins to coexist for long periods of time. As such an inner frontier (Kopytoff 1989), thetropical forest plays a role as one of the social places that contribute to the coexistence of local
people who have different identities and values. Recent studies in historical ecological approaches
are revealing such heterogeneity in local societies has also shaped forest landscape for centuries by
ecological modification of forest vegetation through slash-and-burning (Carrière 2003), hunting andgathering (Yasuoka 2009, 2013), and settlement itself (Fongnzossie et al. 2010).
2-2. Local Settings: Multi-Ethnic Frontier in Cameroon-Congo Border Forest
My research site is a typical example of a multi-ethnic community in the Cameroonian lowland
rainforest, which is located on the international border between Cameroon and the Republic of theCongo, and 650km away from Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. The variety of people can beclassified into three categories according to their lifestyle and ethnic identities: the Baka are huntergatherers; the Bakwele (who speak a Bantu language) are farmers; and the Hausa, Bamileke, andBamoun are merchants. Their populations number around 300, 250, and 50, respectively, for a total
population of around 600 (Oishi 2012, Figure 2). The migrant merchants came from the northern partsof Cameroon and various West African countries of the Sahel area. In addition to the Hausa, nonMuslim cocoa traders and merchants, including the Bamileke and Bamoun peoples from the westernparts of Cameroon, are increasingly common as cocoa cultivation and markets have begun expanding
in the region (Oishi 2016).

― 86 ―

Takanori Oishi

Figure 2: Group composition at the research site (Source: Oishi 2012).
3. Case Study: Trajectory of Forest Policy, Its Impacts on Local Society, and Local Responses
3-1. Large-Scale Enclosure of Forest World from the Upper Governance
The forest world and the people there have been confronting new political pressure during thelast two decades, which has been brought into local society in a top-down way. These include, forexample, forest zoning which is impacting local livelihoods, especially for hunter-gatherers who
are more dependent on forest products (Hattori 2005). The process can be seen as an enclosure of
the forest from the government wherein the modern twin of commercial timber exploitation andnature conservation are co-working. Hereafter in the documentation of forest policy consequences,
stakeholders include local communities constituted by local Bantu and Pygmies, international
conservation NGOs such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF: Nature Conservation NGO), NGOs
for human rights and indigenous movements, commercial logging companies, and Le Ministère desForêts et de la Faune (Cameroonian government).
3-2. Forest Zonation and Customary Use
Forest zonation was the first official output of forest policy implementation in Cameroon. Forests are
divided into permanent commercial logging zones and non-permanent logging zones. Most parts ofthe forest are reserved for commercial logging. Local people are excluded in the process of forest
zonation, which is similar to the concessionary exploitation of resources in the colonial period (Lewis
2005). Following forest zonation, the Cameroonian government and the WWF launched the Jengi
project in southeastern Cameroon to achieve their conservation and development goals, and utiliseda participatory approach, specifically focusing on the Baka Pygmies as they are the first known
inhabitants of the area (Hattori 2014).
Participatory mapping by Cameroonian anthropologist Olivier Njounan Tegomo demonstrates
how the Baka hunter-gatherers continue to use the forest, regardless of these boundaries in the forest(Njounan Tegomo et al. 2012, Figure 3). Community forest implementation has been attempted in theaftermath of zonation policy with support from the WWF. However, very few villages could succeed
in maintaining it around the research area. Forest parcels just closed to the ‘community’ had been
temporarily registered as community forest, but the government demanded tax payment to fulfil the― 87 ―

Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change: Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

right to have it maintained. After the Rehman shock, WWF decreased activities in southeast Cameroon(Sayer et al. 2012), and the project was left in the hands of local people. In the research area, several
family members of the village chief stole the benefits from timber sales, and the community forest has
failed to function.

Njounan Tegomo 2012

Figure 3: Forest zonation and hunter-gatherer forest use in southeastern Cameroon(Source: Njounan Tegomo et al. 2012).
The Cameroon Forest Law of 1994 also established regulations on local people’s use of the forest,
including hunting and fishing activities. Control over game animals is decided according to theirplacement within grouped categories of endangered species created by the Cameroon Forest Law
of 1994: A (integrally protected), B (partially protected), and C (the other species). Implementationof these regulations had been very ‘flexible’ at the ground level. The situation changed, however, inthe late 2000s, when the conservation policy shifted from ‘participatory’ oriented to ‘enforcement’oriented. This change included a militarisation of conservation activities, using army forces such as
the Rapid Intervention Battalions to support anti-poaching patrols (Oishi et al. 2015, Kamgaing et al.,2016). According to government officials, this was done to stop illegal activities like ‘poaching’ andthe distribution of illegal firearms, such as the AK47. The underlying problem motivating this policychange was the increase of elephant poaching with military arms in national parks. Armed operations
have occurred at least three times near our research sites between 2009 and 2012. Starting in 2013and persisting into the present day, local people continue to protest this policy shift at WWF local
headquarters.
3-3. Emerging Land Issues: Small-Scale Enclosure of the Forest World on the Ground
I described how the impact of forest conservation functions from above. Now I want to introduce local
responses at the ground level, taking an example from cocoa-based small-scale agriculture, whichis the most important source of cash income for local peoples in the research area. Cocoa farms are,as a food producing agroforest with food crops, also used as food production by local residents. The
cocoa agroforestry system draws attention not only because it shows significant resilience against bothclimate instabilities and international market fluctuations but also because of its ability to contribute to
the decrease in GHG emissions (Montagnini et al. 2004, Sonwa et al. 2009). The following data show,
however, that it can also bring socioeconomic inequity at the ground level.
Figure 4 shows the historical trajectory of cocoa farming. Cocoa farming started in Cameroon
during the colonial time, but burst after the penetration of the logging operation in the late 1980s.

― 88 ―

Takanori Oishi

Figure 4: Chronology of major socioeconomic events related to cocoa farming.
Figure 5 shows how cocoa cultivation expanded from the 1960s to the 2010s, based on fieldsurveys. We can see how the political and economic events in the larger world, such as liberalisationof national cocoa markets, civil war in the Ivory Coast in the early 2000s, as well as logging operation,
relate to and affect cocoa farming in a remote village.

Figure 5: Demography of cocoa farms in the research area (Source: Oishi 2012).
Cocoa farming in the forest is hard work, including the labour in the long-running rainy season(saison in French) for harvest. People expect that their harvest will bring a lot of cash, but in reality
it results in an increase in debt among the poor. Commoditisation brought accumulation of cash debts
among hunter-gatherer households (Oishi 2016).
To solve the debt problem, lands became subject to negotiation. Land sales are prohibited in
Cameroon; therefore, people practise land rents, and land rents transform into land transfers as they
continue for years. Table 1 shows the combination and direction of land rental contracts, which isliterally one-way traffic from the Baka to the Bakwele, and from the Bakwele to the Merchants.
Although Baka acknowledges borrowers because they can get cash immediately, these contracts arevery unequal between the lender and the borrower (Oishi 2016).
― 89 ―

Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change: Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

Table 1: Combination of land rental contracts by groups (Source: Oishi 2016).

Figure 6: Land accumulation by merchants (Source: Oishi 2012).
As a consequence of land transfer, now land is accumulated by a small number of migrant
merchants (Figure 6). This characteristic of land occupation in cocoa farming is now causing smallscale land grabbing by immigrants from local hunter-gatherers and farmers, causing new sorts ofconflicts between local peoples.
If perennial tree crop plantations continue, crop fields would not return to forests, unlike thetraditionally practised slash-and-burn fields of food crops. The lands no longer rotate from crop fields
to forests, and vice versa. This brings fundamental change in the recognition of land use and ‘rights’ tothe land.
Differences in the causes and patterns of land disputes demonstrate that hunter-gatherers, farmers,
and migrants perceive land resources differently based on their own sociocultural backgrounds. The
legitimacy of their informal ‘rights’ to land is often controversial because of the multiple contexts inwhich rights are claimed. There are the contexts of customary rights to the use of lands, local rules
authorised by local authorities, and the state statutory law on the rights to land ownership. Since a
cocoa plantation requires semi-permanent occupation of the land, a customary system that defends
temporary rights does not catch up to it.
Local agents of the state and village authorities generally accept the rental and sale contractsof land which is prohibited by the state, particularly because they can expect some benefit from― 90 ―

Takanori Oishi

approving the contracts. Under these conditions, migrants gain accumulation of cocoa farms. Whereas
these processes can be simply interpreted as a marginalisation of native peoples, transmission ofcultural traditions were also observed among stakeholders in the process of land negotiation.
3-4. Summary of Case Study
I summarise my observation: new sorts of land issues emerged in a village between local peopleof different sociocultural backgrounds. From perspectives of local hunter-gatherers, this is a kindof small-scale enclosure of the forest space. Together with top-down forest zonation, the rights andlivelihoods of local people have been damaged. As room for local people’s forest use is increasingly
narrowed by forest zoning policy, in combination with commercial logging and nature conservation,
this kind of local land conflict imposes a risk of worsening in the near future.
Verina Ingram, Mirjam Ros-Tonen, and Ton Dietz demonstrated how Non-Timber Forest Products(NTFPs) producers and traders created a bricolage within different governance arrangements ofstatutory, marked-based, customary, and project-based mixture of institutions and corruption. Thismodel well explains the realities of wicked situations of forest governance related to cocoa and coffee
farm managements, and how local actors try to adapt in responding to it (Ingram et al. 2015).
4. Reflections
Researchers play multiple roles in the past and current construction of global environmental discourse,
though there are a variety of positions researchers can occupy in the governance hierarchies. It
is noteworthy that James Fairhead and Melissa Leach described a ‘conglomerit’ of researchers,international agencies, and NGOs (for example, the ‘Tropical Forest International’) that interplay tocreate order in conservation policies, which can bring considerable impact to local people’s livelihoods(Fairhead and Leach 2003).
According to Tetsu Sato, who is a Japanese environmental sociologist as well as an ecologist, there
are weakness in, and losses in translation between, different scales of governance: local, national,
and global. This prevents equitable participation of stakeholders and tends to sacrifice knowledge
users at the bottom (Figure 7). Sato discusses that ‘vertical translators’ are needed to improve thecommunication gap, which can bridge the fissure between global conceptualisation and regional andlocal contexts (Sato 2016).

Figure 7: Triangle of environmental knowledge production and circulation(Modified from Sato 2016).
― 91 ―

Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change: Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

New approaches are needed to achieve more democratic and equitable dialogues between different
levels of governance. For example, citizen science can be a breakthrough in mediating different
stakeholders to achieve win-win practices of forest use and conservation. Citizen science is ‘a situated,bottom-up practice that takes into account local needs, practices and culture and works with broad
networks of people to design and build new devices and knowledge creation processes that cantransform the world’ (Extreme Citizen Science of UCL). For example, participatory mapping of theforest with local peoples using GPS units and its application in improving forest management may be
a good example of the potential of citizen science (Lewis 2012).
The question of ‘how I can participate‘ (Chambers 1997, Iwai 2016) should be addressed by every
researcher and scholar who wants to contribute to bringing about more equitable African environment
policies and close to gap in ground-level realities.

References
Angelsen, A. (Ed.) 2008. Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, Options and Implications. Bogor: Center
for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Auzel, P. and D.S. Wilkie 2000. ‘Wildlife Use in Northern Congo: Hunting in a Commercial Logging
Concession’. In Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests. Eds. J. Robinson and E. Bennett,
New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 413–426.
Blom, B., T. Sunderland, and D. Murdiyarso 2010. ‘Getting REDD to work locally: Lessons learned
from integrated conservation and development projects’. Environmental science & policy 13(2):164–172.
Burnham, P. 2000. ‘Whose forest? Whose myth? Conceptualisations of community forests in
Cameroon’. In Land, Law and Environment: Mythical Land, Legal Boundaries. Eds. A. Abramson
and D. Theodossopoulos, London: Pluto Press, pp. 31–58.
Carrière, S. 2003. Les orphelins de la forêt: pratiques paysannes et écologie forestière (Ntumu, SudCameroun). Paris: IRD Éditions.
Chambers, R. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the Last First. Essex: Longmans Scientific andTechnical Publishers; New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Chambers, R. 1997. Whose Reality Counts?: Putting the First Last. London: Intermediate Technology
Publications.
Extreme Citizen Sciences of University College London n.d. < http://www.ucl.ac.uk/excites / accessedon 25 December 2017>.
Fairhead, J. and M. Leach 2003. Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy inWest Africa and the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fongnzossie, E., T. Oishi, G.M. Nguenang, and B.A. Nkongmeneck 2010. ‘Baka Hunter-Gatherer
perceptions of and impacts on mixed evergreen and semi-deciduous forests in East Cameroon’.
Paper presented at International Conference on Congo Basin hunter-gatherers, Montpellier,France, 23 September 2010.
Hattori, S. 2005. ‘Nature conservation and hunter gatherers’ life in Cameroonian rainforest’. African
Study Monographs 29: 41–51.
Hattori, S. 2014. ‘Current issues facing the forest people in southeastern Cameroon: the dynamics ofBaka life and their ethnic relationship with farmers’. African study monographs 47: 97–119.
Ingram, V., M.A.F. Ros-Tonen, and T. Dietz 2015. ‘A fine mess: Bricolaged forest governance in― 92 ―

Takanori Oishi

Cameroon’. International Journal of the Commons 9(1): 41–64.
Iwai, Y. 2016. ‘Community participatory nature conservation in Tanzania’. In African Potential 5:
Nature Conservation. Eds. G. Yamakoshi, T. Meguro, and T. Sato, Kyoto: Kyoto University Press,
pp. 109–144. (In Japanese)
Kamgaing, O.W.T. and T. Oishi 2016. ‘Baka Hunter-gatherers in Southeast Cameroon: Overlookedeyes in anti-poaching activities’. Paper presented at Beyond Enforcement: Involving Indigenous
Peoples and Local Communities in Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade (Regional workshop for West
and Central Africa), Douala, Cameroon, 24-25 February 2016.
Kitanishi, K. 2010. ‘African tropical forest and globalization’. In People, Nature and History ofAfrican Tropical Forests I: From Ecological Perspectives. Eds. D. Kimura and K. Kitanishi,
Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, pp. 59–76. (In Japanese)
Kopytoff, I. (Ed.) 1989. The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lewis, J. 2005. ‘Whose forest is it anyway? Mbendjele Yaka pygmies, the Ndoki Forest and the wider
world’. In Property and Equality, Volume2: Encapsulation, Commercialisation, Discrimination,
Eds. T. Widlok and W.G. Tadesse, New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 56–78.
Lewis, J. 2012. ‘Technological leap-frogging in the Congo Basin, pygmies and global positioning
systems in Central Africa: What has happened and where is it going?’. African Study Monographs
43: 15–44.
Montagnini, F. and P.K.R. Nair 2004. ‘Carbon sequestration: an underexploited environmental benefitof agroforestry systems’. In New vistas in agroforestry. Eds. P.K.R. Nair, M.R. Rao, and L.E.
Back, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 281–295.
Njounan Tegomo, O., L. Defo, and L. Usongo 2012. ‘Mapping of resource use area by the Baka
Pygmies inside and around Boumba-Bek National Park in Southeast Cameroon, with specialreference to Baka’s customary rights’. African Study Monographs 43: 45–59.
Oishi, T. 2012. ‘Cash crop cultivation and interethnic relations of the Baka hunter-gatherers insoutheastern Cameroon’. African Study Monographs 43: 115–136.
Oishi, T., O.W.T. Kamgaing, R. Yamaguchi, and K. Hayashi 2015. ‘Anti-poaching operations
by military forces and their impacts on local people in southeastern Cameroon’. Symposium‘Beyond enforcement: Communities, governance, incentives and sustainable use in combating
wildlife crime’. Organised by IUCN CEESP/SSC Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist
Group(SULi), International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), Austrian Ministryof Environment, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED), University of
Queensl and TRAFFIC - the wildlife trade monitoring network, Muldersdrift, South Africa, 26-28
February 2015.
Oishi, T. 2016. ‘Aspects of Interactions between Baka Hunter-Gatherers and Migrant Merchants inSoutheastern Cameroon’. In Senri Ethnological Studies 94 (Hunter-Gatherers and their Neighbors
in Asia, Africa, and South America. Eds. K. Ikeya and R.K. Hitchcock.): 157–175.
Sato, T. 2016. Field Scientist. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. (In Japanese)
Sayer, J.A., D. Endamana, M. Ruiz-Perez, A.K. Boedhihartono, Z. Nzooh, A. Eyebe, A. Awono, and
L. Usongo 2012. ‘Global financial crisis impacts forest conservation in Cameroon’. International
Forestry Review 14(1): 90–98.
Sharpe, B. 1998. ‘‘First the forest’: conservation, ‘community’ and ‘participation’ in south-west
Cameroon’. Africa 68(1): 25–45.

― 93 ―

Sustaining Forest Livelihoods in an Era of Climate Change: Dialogue Beyond ‘Participation’ and ‘Community’ Arguments

Sonwa, D.J., S.F. Weise, B.A. Nkongmeneck, M. Tchatat, and M.J.J. Janssens 2009. ‘Carbon stockin smallholder chocolate forest in southern Cameroon and potential role in climate change
mitigation’. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 6(25): 252008.
Tiani, A.M., M.Y. Bele, and D.J. Sonwa 2015. ‘What are we talking about? The state of perceptions
and knowledge on REDD+ and adaptation to climate change in Central Africa’. Climate andDevelopment 7(4): 310–321.
Yasuoka, H. 2009. ‘Concentrated distribution of wild yam patches: Historical ecology and thesubsistence of African rainforest hunter-gatherers’. Human Ecology 37(5): 577–587.
Yasuoka, H. 2013. ‘Dense wild yam patches established by hunter-gatherer camps: Beyond the wild
yam question, toward the historical ecology of rainforests’. Human Ecology 41(3): 465−475.

― 94 ―