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Mapping Access to Benefits in Cameroon using Commodity Chain Analysis: A Case Study of the Azobé Timber Chain

 

Wynet Smith, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, UK. Email: wvs20@cam.ac.uk

 

Introduction

 

In Southwest Cameroon, a farmer bemoans the damage to his farm resulting from the activities of a company logging in his village’s community forest. The company cut through peoples’ farms in their attempt to open a road into the steep forests of the Bakossi Mountains. Meanwhile, the chiefs of nearby villages, who contest the community forest and claim such activities are illegal, discuss how to disrupt the logging operations and ensure that their forest is not destroyed. The trees being logged – including a highly valued, very resistant hardwood named Lophira alata or azobé – are being loaded on trucks and taken to Douala. This wood, as well as azobé coming from other logging sites, is mostly bound for Europe, where it ends up being used in projects such as a boardwalk in Nieuwport, Belgium. At the European end of the commodity chain, the use of tropical wood from sites such as the one in Southwest Cameroon generates considerable controversy. In July 2004, for example, a coalition of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) criticized the construction of the Belgium boardwalk, claiming that such projects are helping to destroy tropical forests through illegal and unsustainable logging. The NGOs are demanding, amongst other things, that local, provincial and national authorities in Europe institute more coherent and rigorous buying policies for tropical wood (Forum illegale houtkap, 2004).

As the above anecdote illustrates, the commodity or supply chain linking the farmer and the surrounding forest with the environmentalists and the boardwalk in Belgium is a highly complex and contested system, with the material flow of timber but a small aspect of the overall chain. One tool for mapping this complex system is commodity chain analysis, which can help identify the institutions, mechanisms and actors that govern access to the resource and mediate the distribution of profits. It can also assist in deconstructing the interactions between political discourse and the functioning of the market. In this article, I illustrate the potential of commodity chain analysis by presenting a summary of the timber commodity chain in Southwest Cameroon and the links between Cameroonian activities and international political discourse in Europe.

The article begins with an introduction to commodity chain analysis and the selection of Cameroon as a case study. Discussion then moves on to highlight the means by which the Cameroonian Government controls access to the forest resource and the specific case of the azobé timber chain in the country’s Southwest Province. The next section discusses the issue of illegality in the chain, whilst the penultimate section brings together the local and global levels of the chain and how political discourse in Europe acts both as a backdrop to and as a factor that influences the market itself. The article concludes by arguing how commodity chain analysis is a useful tool for interrogating these types of local-global linkages and how environmental policy discourse can affect outcomes in producer countries such as Cameroon as well as in Europe.

 

The Power of Commodity Chain Analysis

A growing body of literature within geography and other disciplines explores the concept of commodity chains and networks. Variations can be found in terminology, theoretical bases, and thematic areas. In their review article, Leslie and Reimer (1999) define three general categories of commodity chain literature: global commodity chain analysis, systems of provision literature and commodity circuits. Other studies use either the term filière or value chains. For the purposes of this article, I use the definition of commodity chains as a “series of interlinked exchanges through which a commodity and its constituents pass from extraction or harvesting through production to end use” (Ribot 1998:307-308). The embedded nature of power relations in the chain (Kaplinsky and Morris 2001: 8) and “who controls global trade and industry” are key questions in commodity chain studies (Gibbon 2001:346). Governance arrangements are important and can be either centralized or decentralized, buyer-driven or producer-driven (Gereffi 1994). Tracing networks provides a means of examining “the ongoing division and integration of labor processes and … the constant development and transformation of the world-economy’s production system” (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1994:17).

The creation of these chains is complex. The networks linking households, states and companies are “situationally specific, socially constructed, and locally integrated, underscoring the social embeddedness of economic organization” (Gereffi, Korzeniewicz and Korzeniewicz 1994:2). Le Billon (1999) notes that chains are embedded in much wider networks of social actors and practices than the production of the commodity itself. In turn, the commodity shapes these networks and social institutions. From this perspective, “markets are not only regulated by economic rationality, government policies and legal mechanisms but are both constrained and enabled by a vast array of social relations and institutions such as, for example, kinship or religious institutions” (Barber 1995, cited in Le Billon 1999). The concept of social embeddedness emphasizes the role and construction of power in the commodification process. Hartwick (1998:425) argues that it is important not just to concentrate on identifying actors and distribution of benefits but that commodity chain analysis also needs to address “the most politically sensitive sites along commodity chains.”

Two commodity chain studies on forest resource use are of particular interest to this article. In the first study, Ribot (1998) explores how the control and maintenance of commercial forest access occurs at different levels of the charcoal commodity chain in Senegal. He uses commodity chain analysis as a tool to examine how, and for whom, markets operate and for understanding the patterns of benefit distribution. Ribot reveals a complex series of structures, mechanisms, and relations used by the various actors in Senegal to maintain their access to profits (Ribot 1998:308). In the second study, Le Billon (1999; 2000) examines timber commodity chains in Cambodia, focusing not only on the actors in the chain, but also on the meanings constructed through forestry discourse in the country and as influenced by external agents. He deconstructs the ideal model of forest management that is implicit in the recommendations of donor agencies, and how this actually results in more exclusionary forms of forest management. The ideal model of forest management did not make sense in Cambodia, where the shift from ‘anarchy’ to ‘order’ failed to benefit either local people or local forests (Le Billon 2000).

 

Cameroon as a Case Study

Situated at the junction of West and Central Africa, Cameroon is an exceptional country for exploring the material and discursive construction of timber commodity chains. It has rich forest resources and a complex colonial history that has resulted in lingering political, economic and social challenges. Humid moist forest covers approximately 23.9 million hectares, or almost 50 percent of Cameroon’s territory (FAO 2001), much of it located in the five southern-most provinces (see Figure 1). Cameroon’s forests form part of what is today referred to as the Congo Basin forests, which span seven countries and cover almost 200 million hectares - the second largest contiguous block of tropical rainforest in the world (Laporte et al. 1998). The area is the subject of considerable international attention, with an announcement at the Johannesburg Summit of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership and US$53 million dollars of funding for numerous conservation initiatives (U.S. State Department 2002).

 

Figure 1: Cameroon’s forest distribution

 

 

The volume of total industrial roundwood production in Cameroon has been increasing significantly over the last 40 years and a large proportion of the country’s forests are now managed for commercial timber purposes (Global Forest Watch Cameroon 2000). Cameroon is one of the top six tropical timber exporters in the world: it exported over 2.8 million cubic meters of industrial roundwood equivalent in 1997 (ITTO 2001). This increase in exports, combined with a decline in oil revenues, means the timber industry now provides a significant proportion of Cameroon’s foreign export earnings. In 1996-1998, the forest sector contributed approximately 230 million USD per year, or almost 20 percent, of the total value of exports (Eba'a Atyi 1998)

 

Access to the Forest Resource in Cameroon

As noted by Goldman (1998:2), whoever “controls property rights controls the processes of resource extraction and environmental change.” In terms of commercial forest resources in Southwest Cameroon, a number of factors, including the institutional context, are important determinants of access. The main legal means for governing access to forest resources, however, is the revised Forestry Law of 1994. Existing literature considers this legislation the most progressive in Central Africa as there are provisions for community benefits and processes for transparency in the administration of rights (Ekoko 2000; Silva et al. 2002). The law carves up Cameroon’s forests into two main categories, permanent and non-permanent forest. The permanent forest estate consists of both State and Council forests and covers thirty percent of the national territory. State forests include both areas for wildlife protection and forest reserves. Council forests are areas given as private property to a municipal or rural council. The non-permanent forest is further divided into communal, community, and private forests. The community forests are intended to provide communities with the right to own and manage up to 5,000 hectares.

 

Table 1: Commercial timber exploitation rights outlined in Cameroon’s 1994 Forestry Law and Decree No. 95/531/PM (dated August 23, 1995).

 

Forest Exploitation Right	Notes	Amount (area or volume)	Period
Forest Management Unit (FMU)	An agreement to provide a long-term supply of wood.	Up to 200,000 hectares per company	15 years, renewable. 3 years initially.
Sale of standing volume (SSV)	Permanent domain forest for Cameroon nationals only	Specified volume	1 year, non-renewable
	Non-permanent domain forest	2,500 hectare, specified volume	3 years, non-renewable
Exploitation permits	Small-scale commercial	500 m3	1 year, non-renewable
Timber Recover Special Authorization (TRSA)	For salvage of abandoned timber on the coast and roads	Not specified in law	Less than one year
Timber Recovery Permit (TRP)	Felling trees for road-building and other infrastructure	1,000 hectares	Not specified

 

The law also sets out the categories and means of forest exploitation rights (see Table 1). The major categories of commercial exploitation are forest management units (FMU) and sales of standing volume (SSV). FMU are large-scale logging areas that are restricted to State production forests while SSV can be located either in permanent forest areas of state production or council forests, or in non-permanent forests. FMU are initially for 15 years and are renewable. The conditions for SSV depend on the forest category but are basically short-term exploitation licenses for relatively small areas (2,500 hectares). An exploitation permit that provides up to 500 cubic meters of wood was also included in the law but has been suspended since 1999. Companies can also obtain timber through short-term special authorizations for timber removal (TRSA), for infrastructure purposes such as road building, and timber salvage or recover permits (TRP). These are not intended, however, to provide a steady supply of wood. Additionally, companies can work with community forests or with councils that have a council forest.

Access to any of the commercial rights requires that a company or individual be registered as an approved timber exploiter with the government. The registered timber exploiters are then entitled to participate in the bidding processes for FMU and SSV, with a final decision made by an inter-ministerial commission and monitored by an independent observer. Access to any of these exploitation rights requires, by law, financial resources and technical capacity or training. Although not required by law, political connections are also often needed to obtain logging rights. A wide-range of links thus exists between local communities and companies, between elites and companies, and between small-scale Cameroonian and multinational companies. The next section examines the implications of these factors in the case of the azobé timber chain in Southwest Province.

 

The Azobé Chain in the Southwest Province

Cameroon’s Southwest Province is densely populated and agriculture plays a significant role in the local economy. The region is fairly mountainous and the forests are located within the Guinean forests, which are known for their high levels of biodiversity and species endemism (Diangha 2001; Oates and Bergle 2001). The region includes a number of important conservation areas, including Banyang-Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary and the proposed Bakossi National Park.

Commercial timber exploitation has been occurring in the Southwest Province since at least the 1940s, with logging increasing in the late 1950s (Government of the Southern Cameroons 1960; cf. Sharpe 2005). There is currently one active FMU and another that is not yet attributed. These concessions border on the boundaries of Korup National Park in one case, and the Banyang-Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary in the other (see Figure 3). Additionally, there have been a number of SSV over the past ten years. The most recent public auction for SSV was in September 2003 and included three in Southwest Province. There is also the Ndecuda community forest in Ndisse-Ekep, where logging has been taking place on and off since 2002.

An analysis of the various logging rights handed out in recent years indicates a very specialized and vertically integrated timber commodity chain (see Table 2). Timber from the various logging rights appears to flow predominantly to three international companies: Wijma; Transformation Reef Cameroon (TRC); and Compagnie Industrielle & Commerciale des Bois Exotiques (CIBEC), all of which are Dutch or have strong Dutch connections. In those cases where these companies are not directly involved in owning the logging rights or carrying out the timber harvesting, they have been the partners or purchasers of the wood cut by Cameroonian companies who are the legal rights-holders. Most of the wood goes to the first two companies with the third being a smaller player.

 

Table 2: Preliminary list of recent and current logging rights in Southwest Province.

 

Year	Logging Right	Department	Division	Winner	Partner/ Purchaser
2002	FMU 11-002	Manyu	Upper Banyang	Wijma
2003	SSV 11-06-16	Ndian and Meme	Mbongue & Ekondo Titi	TRC
2003	SSV 11-06-17	Kupe-Manenguba	Nguti	TRC
2003	SSV 11-06-18	Kupe-Manenguba	Nguti	CAFECO*	Wijma
2001	SSV 11-06-13	Meme	Konye	PMF-Wood	TRC
2001	SSV 11-03-14	Kupe-Manenguba	Tombel	PMF-Wood	TRC
2001	SSV 11-03-15	Kupe-Manenguba	Tombel
2000	SSV 11-06-12	Meme	Kumba	SEPFCO	TRC
1999	SSV 11-05-04	Kupe-Manenguba	Nguti	Zangem Albert	TRC
1997	SSV 11-05-01	Kupe-Manenguba		SSCTM	No information
1997	SSV 11-03-05			Enoumedi	No information
2001	TRSA 2252	Kupe-Manenguba	Nguti	Zangem Albert	TRC
2002	Community Forest	Kupe-Manenguba	Tombel	Ndecuda Community Development Association	Complexe Helena Bois and CIBEC

Source: Compiled from Government notices, legal documents, Global Witness reports, Greenpeace reports, interviews and direct observation.

 

Further analysis of the commodity chain shows that despite the rich array of species in the forests of Southwest Cameroon, azobé accounts for a significant proportion of the trees logged in this region. Azobé is used for heavy marine construction, including locks, as well as for railway cross-ties and heavy-duty flooring (Chudnoff 1984). The wood’s resistant properties mean that it does not need to be treated with preservatives. Because of its hardness, azobé tends to be processed by a specialized group of companies. Of Cameroon’s azobé exports, the bulk is sent to Europe with the Netherlands receiving the vast majority. In 2003, some 80 percent of imported azobé ended up there, with Belgium and France each receiving just over five percent while the UK and the USA imported approximately three percent and three and a half percent respectively (SEPBC 2004). .

In terms of the big three Dutch companies, Wijma, or GWZ, is a logging and trading company that specializes in highly durable timber for marine engineering projects. They have been active in Africa and Cameroon for over thirty years. They acquired FMU 11-002 in the Southwest in 2002. They constructed a new sawmill in Nguti, which opened in January 2004. They work with various species of tree in Nguti, although azobé accounts for 80 to 90 percent of total production. They export 80 to 90 percent of their entire azobé production to Europe, although they were also producing ties for the Cameroonian railway in June 2004. At that time, they were processing wood coming from the FMU and were soon to begin doing the same to timber from SSV 11-06-18, awarded to Cafeco, a Cameroonian company.

The second company, TRC, is a subdivision of Reef, a Dutch company that specializes in wood for marine construction. Reef has an outstanding environmental reputation in Europe and 30% of the wood sold by Reef in 2001 was Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified (Greenpeace, Monitor and CED 2003). TRC did not possess a FMU until 2004 and have usually obtained their timber from SSV attributed to Cameroonian companies (Global Witness 2002c; 2003b; Greenpeace, Monitor and CED, 2003). In December 2003, they obtained two SSV in Southwest Province, SSV 11-06-16 and SSV 11-06-17. TRC owns a sawmill in Douala, as well as a sawmill in Kumba, which they purchased in 2002.

CIBEC, the third company, was controlled by Dutch businessman Jacco Ravenhorst, and began activities in Cameroon in 1998 (Greenpeace and CED 2003). They had a sawmill in the Bonabéri section of Douala and focused on species such as azobé and doussié (Carret 1999). Most of their wood came from TRC although they also began to source wood from the Ndecuda community forest in the Bakossi Mountains in Southwest Province in 2002. They conducted this exploitation in partnership with Complex Helena Bois, a Cameroonian company based in Douala. This timber source was disrupted for various reasons including a provincial court injunction (Wild et al. 2004) and the company apparently later filed for bankruptcy (Anonymous source 2004).

 

Illegality in the Timber Chain

Implementation of the law and its various regulations is problematic on a number of levels in Cameroon and at different points within the commodity chain. There have been on-going problems concerning illegal logging and a number of cases of irregular attribution and irregular relocation of exploitation rights. This section describes the means by which government officials, elites and companies manipulate the system in order to access or control the resource, focusing on the attribution of SSV and community forests as an example.

As noted earlier, both SSV and community forests can be placed in the non-permanent forest domain. In December 2002, MINEF issued an order that fixed the procedures for a “preemption right” that would enable communities to refuse a SSV and instead pursue community forestry activities in the same area of forest. Thus, prior to issuing tenders for SSV, the Government has a responsibility to inform communities. In practice, however, this right does not appear to have been applied on a transparent or consistent basis. For example, all six chiefs interviewed in the villages around SSV 11-06-17 stated that the first they knew of the SSV was when TRC arrived in their village with a government order showing they had the right to log. Members of two villages erected a barricade to protest against the logging because: As one chief explained:

 

They just surprised us when they came. As a result of that, there was a blockade set up at the road leading into the forest because, traditionally, the custodians are supposed to be aware of (problems) before ever the forest is tampered with.

 

Another chief complained that although he had been told that logging would only begin after a regional meeting, TRC started to log before this meeting ever took place. Additionally, neither the Nguti Mayor nor the chiefs appeared to be aware that SSV 11-06-18 would soon be in operation.

A number of other SSV in the Southwest have involved illegal activities or social conflicts, as evident in Table 3 (Global Witness 2002c; 2003a; 2003b; Greenpeace, Monitor and CED 2003). A major concern revolves around the relocation of SSV areas after the bidding and allocation process is complete but before the issuance of documents, which requires the active participation of public officials (Global Witness 2003b; 2004). This practice effectively removes the community’s preemption right as well as depriving other companies of the opportunity to bid on that particular patch of forest. Additionally, there have been numerous cases of companies actually logging outside of their approved area, resulting in significant losses of royalties to the state (Global Witness 2002a; 2002b; 2003b; Greenpeace, Monitor and CED 2003).

 

Table 3: Examples of documented problems in some exploitation rights in Southwest Province.

 

Right	Company	Notes
SSV 11-06-16	TRC	SSV granted to TRC is different in the final authorization compared to the area opened for public bidding in the September 2003 Public Notice. Allegations of wrongdoing have been made in the press.
SSV 11-06-17	TRC	This SSV was not included in the original Planning document that is used to notify communities about their right of refusal.
SSV11-06-18	CAFECO	The area of the map does not match legal description.
SSV 11-06-12	SEPFCO	Inaccurate position of SSV on the ground. Evidence of logging 7.5 km outside of SSV boundaries. Illegal road network.
SSV 11-06-13	PMF Wood	The boundaries of this SSV were moved 20 km away from legal location advertised the June 2000 public bid. Illegal logging outside of boundaries. Conflict with local community.
SSV 11-05-14 and TRSA 2252	Zangem Albert	Issuance and dates of use appear irregular. Logging outside of dates and outside of approved boundaries.
FMU 11-002	Wijma	Irregular use of log books (DF-10).
Ndecuda Community Forest	Complexe Helena Bois-CIBEC	On-going conflict with local communities. Authorization to exploit the forest by industrial means.

Sources: Various Global Witness and Greenpeace reports and newspaper articles.

 

There are also allegations of manipulation of the community forest regime in Cameroon. In many cases, local elites and economic operators have used community forests to gain access rights to the forest and the associated economic benefits. This situation appears to hold true in terms of the Ndecuda community forest, where logging was initiated by two local elites who live elsewhere. The villages of Ndisse and Ekep obtained the rights to the forest in 2002, despite protests from nearby villages. The surrounding villages took the case to court, alleging that the community forestry process was not followed and a consultation meeting had never taken place. The independent monitor, Global Witness, investigated some issues in 2002 and found the forest had never been demarcated on the ground (Global Witness 2002c). The other villages lost the case, however, in 2003 after considerable social conflict and violent incidents involving the army and local government officials. One village chief stated that this was possible in Cameroon because:

 

Here, it is the survival of the fittest … those who have the money can fight and win a legal battle. I am not afraid to say it. Even if it was the Governor who was there or the President himself. Let me die. Cameroon is Cameroon.

 

Some residents of Ndisse now express concern and dismay about the situation and how their community had been misled. One young man stated:

 

A road from Ndisse to Ekep. Electricity. Employment for the youths. See? She [Helena Complexe] promised these things but nothing has been done since the creation of the community forest. She puts more attention on the production of timber.

 

While promises are made to the village members to obtain their consent, these often amount to nothing. Reasons for manipulating access are at least in part due to a desire to garner the benefits from this high value commodity. The distribution of benefits along the chain is far from equitable, despite widespread rhetoric of poverty alleviation and the like (see Table 4 for a simple expression of the numbers). Value at the local level (forest level) remains low. In the Ndecuda community forest, for example, Ndisse and Ekep’s contract with Complex Helena Bois pays them 1,000 FCFA per cubic meter of wood of any species, including azobé. In SSV 11-07-17, the villagers received 1,000 FCFA/m for wood directly from TRC. Royalties are paid separately to the government, with forty percent intended for the municipal council and ten percent for the affected communities. The export value set by the government for tax purposes is currently 84,000 FCFA for azobé. Initial data gathered from companies in Europe indicate that this wood (in end product form) can be sold for between 450 and 1,100 Euros/m, or approximately 700,000 FCFA/m. The distribution of earnings / profits in Cameroon is related to one’s ability to mediate access, something which increases the further you move away from the forest and higher up in the commodity chain. Elites from Ndisse, for example, now have their own cars, while the resident villagers both here and in the isolated settlement of Ekep, continue to live without electricity and the road they so desperately wanted.

 

Table 4: Value of azobé along the commodity chain.

 

           

Location	Value (FCFA/m3)	Equivalent (Euro/ m3)
Villages	1,000 – 5,000	1.50 to 8.00
Port (Cameroon government FOB)	85,000	125
FOB prices (log price) as of February 2005		145
Europe retail price	700,000	1,100.00

Source: Interviews, Government documents, ITTO Market Study Reports.

 

Contesting Central African Forest Spaces: Influencing the Market through Political Discourse

 

Issues of illegality, coercion and manipulation of the legal regime become even more problematic in the global context and have significant ramifications for the international trade in timber from the Southwest and other parts of Cameroon. This is partly because tropical forests are “highly contested spaces”, both on the ground and in social theory (Doornbos, Saith and White 2000). On the one hand, tropical timber is a high-value commodity that provides significant revenues for many Third World countries. On the other hand, tropical humid forests are a high priority on the international environmental agenda (Adger et al. 2001; Humphreys 1996), with various actors expressing concern about the on-going loss of these biodiversity hotspots (Bowles and Prickett 2001). The demand for timber is identified as an important cause of forest degradation globally (Dudley, Jeanrenaud and Sullivan 1998), whilst its impacts on biodiversity are poorly understood (Matthews et al. 2000). Logging is considered the most significant threat to remaining frontier forest in many global regions, including Africa (Bryant, Nielsen and Tangley 1997). As a result of these findings, highly politicized struggles to control access to and use of the forest play out on the international as well as national and local stages.

This struggle is nowhere more apparent than in the battle over timber from Cameroon and other Central African forest nations, which is being fought both in Europe and on the ground in Cameroon. At the European end of the commodity chain, actors have developed various strategies to address the problem of declining forest cover. Many groups, from NGOs to multilateral and bilateral agencies, have championed market-based approaches, including certification and labeling. The underlying assumptions are that since forest use and logging is inevitable, there should be an attempt to ensure that such use is managed sustainably. This approach, often based within first-world contexts, recognizes the power of the consumer and the market, and attempts to use that market to influence change. As a result, part of the current discourse focuses on improving the logging industry’s operating practices and reducing the impact of demand.

The concept of supply chains is an explicit part of international forestry discourse. Many NGOs are currently expending considerable effort on tracing the links between development activities in remaining forest areas and the governments, retailers and other consumers who buy the wood. As mentioned briefly in the introduction, a coalition of European NGOs released a report that criticized the construction of a boardwalk in Belgium because of its use of Cameroon timber. This move by Greenpeace and others is part of a larger campaign targeting tropical timber supply chains that rely on illegally and unsustainably harvested wood. For example, in 2002, Greenpeace took public action against the United Kingdom government, storming Whitehall during renovations to replace windows and doors that they claimed were made of illegally and unsustainably harvested wood from Cameroon.

They have also consistently targeted companies in an attempt to influence the timber commodity markets. They have attacked a number of companies, including Wijma, Reef and CIBEC, based on their records in Cameroon (Greenpeace 2003; Greenpeace and CED 2003; Greenpeace, Monitor and CED 2003). In one report, the caption for a picture of Wijma sawn timber in a Dutch port reads:

Is this timber legally produced? Once Wijma’s sawn timber arrives on the European market, it is impossible for the customer to verify its legality. Logs from legal and illegal sources are easily mixed and could be processed together in Wijma’s sawmills in Cameroon or in Europe (Greenpeace 2003).

They have challenged timber traders, such as Hupkes in the Netherlands, to audit their own suppliers and ensure they are not marketing illegally harvested timber (Greenpeace and CED, 2003). They are questioning the validity of the entire chain, not just the illegal aspects. Their objective is to pressure companies into changing their practices and governments to reform legislation and purchasing policies.

Partly in response to such pressure, European governments including those of the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the European Union (EU) itself, are developing policies focused on reducing the importation of illegally harvested and traded tropical timber. For example, the EU has just developed an action plan focused on reducing the importation of illegally harvested and traded tropical timber (European Commission 2003) and the UK government has a procurement policy on tropical hardwood (Meecher 2000). The G8 is addressing the issue of illegal logging in 2005, although their Environment and Development Ministers refrained from endorsing any legislative language in their March 2005 statement.

These new policies and developments are in turn beginning to affect the functioning of related markets. Companies are now turning to certification and other processes in an attempt to ensure they do not lose their access to markets in Europe. Eight companies, including Reef, sent an open letter to the G8 Ministers, calling upon them to take action and develop legislation. This would have seemed impossible five years ago. In turn, these developments in Europe are affecting operations on the ground, with some companies at least attempting to implement timber-tracking systems as part of their Cameroonian operations. Thus, change does seem to be underway, although it is still too early to assess the overall impacts and meaning of these changes.

 

Conclusion

 

Tropical timber is a high-value commodity that links villagers and timber-producers in forest-rich countries with traders, retailers and consumers in countries around the world and provides significant revenues for many Third World countries. The political nature of the timber trade and the broader forestry discourse raises questions, however, about the nature of power relations in political economic structures and knowledge construction surrounding timber commodity chains. Commodity chain analysis is a tool that enables the deconstruction of the networks, discourses and power dynamics present in these chains. Following the network of actors, processes and institutions, as well as the distribution of access to benefits and profits highlights the socially embedded nature of the timber chain and how there are complex linkages between the different processes taking place at global, regional and local levels. It also reveals that northern environmental pressures can bring about conditions that affect the functioning of the market. The discourses on the conservation and development of tropical rain forests are targeting timber commodity chains linking places such as Cameroon’s Southwest Province with international markets in Belgium and the United Kingdom. In response, market players and consumers are beginning to react and even, in some cases, becoming proactive in terms of developing their own strategies and visions for change. Progress is slow, however, and only time will tell whether these different initiatives will have an impact on levels of illegally logged timber.

 

Acknowledgements

 

I would like to thank the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Cambridge Political Economy Society Trust for their doctoral scholarships. Fieldwork funding was obtained from the World Resources Institute (WRI), an International Tropical Timber Organization fellowship, Cambridge University’s Smuts Memorial and UAC Nigeria Funds, and the Department of Geography’s Philip Lake II Fund. I would like to extend a special thank you to Jesse Ribot of WRI for his on-going support and for providing fieldwork funding. I would like to thank the staff at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the various people whom assisted me along the way through interviews and discussions. I would also like to thank Bill Adams, my Ph.D. supervisor, for his advice and support and the organizers of the IASCP 2004 conference and the Christensen Fund for the travel award to attend the conference.

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NOTES

This analysis draws upon a much broader study of the timber commodity chains linking Cameroon and Europe, and how these are embedded in environmental politics, that the author conducted in Cameroon during 2003-2004 as part of his PhD research. He conducted extensive informal and semi-formal interviews with key actors in the chain from Cameroon to Europe, as well as direct observation of activities at various points in the chain.

It is debatable, of course, how much these export earnings translate either into real contributions to development or direct benefits for local communities.

Law No. 94-1 to lay down forestry wildlife and fisheries regulations.

The development of the Law, however, was shrouded in considerable controversy (Ekoko, 2000) and its’ implementation is variable with regards to a number of aspects including community forests and commercial forest concessions.

Law 94-1, Section 21 and 22.

Law 94-1, Section 24.

Law 94-1, Section 30.

Law 94-1, Section 37

According to some sources, it appears that SSV are now supposed to be limited solely to non-permanent domain forests. There are cases, however, where recent SSV are at least partially within the permanent forest domain and even overlapping with proposed national parks, such as the case of the proposed Ebo National Park and SSV 07-02-32 in Littoral Province.

The suspension of these permits was purportedly to cut down on abuse. One side effect, however, is that most small scale operators are now left no option but to log illegally.

TRP have been suspended since 1999 by Decision No. 0944/0/MINEF/DF of 30 July, 1999.

To date, only one communal forest in Cameroon has been classified and exploitation has only recently begun so companies have not yet been able to readily access wood through this route (Oyono 2004).

Law 94-1, Section 41.

One forestry company employee said to the author, in April 2004, that “Cameroonians have the opportunity, but not the means. My boss has the means. He is the son of the President.”

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Global 200 Ecoregions, this area can be classed into two major ecoregions:
the Congolian Coastal Forests and the Cameroon Highland Forests (Olson and Dinerstein 2002; Olson et al. 2000). They are subsumed into the Congo Basin forest term in most contemporary usage (CARPE 2005).

Companies were operating in Tombel in the 1940s and in Southern Bakossi in the 1950s through 1960s (Wild et al. 2004). In the Nguti area, there has been logging since at least the 1960s (Diangha 2001).

This sale included 20 SSV reserved for nationals and forty in a general category. Anyone applying under the national category would not, however, be able to apply for the any SSV in the general category.

The list is based on a compilation of documentation the author accessed while in Cameroon. There may be other rights that have been authorised but which could not be accessed or which are not available in the most recent listing of rights. A recent atlas released by Global Forest Watch Cameroon (2005), and compiled directly from Government-supplied data, is missing information on 179 out of 311allocated SSV.

They also own a sawmill and FMU in South Province, where azobé is also found.

Cafeco are sub-contractors in the Wijma FMU; they carry out the actual harvesting activity, though they use equipment leased from Wijma. Cafeco will also harvest the timber in their SSV but then sell the logs to Wijma.

Decision No 00158/D/MINEF/CABA of December 30, 2003. They also obtained two other SSV in Littoral and Centre Provinces.

The sawmill has been in operation since 1973 and owned by a number of companies, including STIK, affiliated with Wijma (Carret 1999).

Arrêté 518/MINEF/CAB du 21 Décembre 2002.

In general in Cameroon, a significant proportion of the SSV allocated appear to be larger than the 2,500 hectares allowed by law (Global Forest Watch Cameroon 2005:10).

Pound Sterling is equivalent to approximately 950 Central African Francs (FCFA). One Euro is worth about 670 FCFA.

The 1,000 FCFA/m3 appears to have been created as a mechanism to provide benefits to the communities as an incentive to allow logging (Karsenty 1999).

There are significant problems with the distribution and spending of the forest royalties in Cameroon.

For example, producer countries of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) exported nearly 8.3 billion USD in 2000 and 7.4 billion USD in 2001 of tropical timber products (ITTO 2003).

Tropical moist forest are “evergreen or partly evergreen forests, in areas receiving not less than 100 mm of precipitation in any month for two out of three years, with mean annual temperature of 24-plus degrees C and essentially frost-free”. (Myers 1980, cited in Myers 1994:27). These forests are rich in biodiversity: closed tropical forests are estimated to hold between 50 and 90 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity (Reid and Miller 1989).

“Our pledge on forestry products”, Thursday 17/03/05, The Guardian. Available online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1439523,00.html.