USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

Forest exploitation in Cameroon (1884-1994): An oxymoron of top-down and bottom-up forest management policy approaches.

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

Richard S. Mbatu

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

ISSN

0020-7233

Abstract

Forest exploitation in Cameroon goes back to the pre‐colonial period when early ethnic settlers used the ‘law of status’ system to manage land and forests in the territory. With the arrival of colonial powers, beginning with the Germans in 1884, the law of status system was replaced by top‐down state‐centred management system. This top‐down management system was inherited by post‐colonial authorities and enforced until 1994 when a new forestry law was launched, based on bottom‐up management system. This paper reviews all these three systems. Communities are not benefiting from an actual bottom‐up management system. The author argues that the forests sector in Cameroon needs a new management paradigm.

Comments

Abstract only. Full-text article is available only through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in International Journal of Environmental Studies, 66(6), 747 - 763. 10.1080/00207230902860935 Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.

Language

en_US

Publisher

Routledge

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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