Local Communities’ and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Forests in Central Africa: From Hope to Challenges

Abstract

This paper reviews the various rights of local communities and indigenous peoples over forest resources in Central Africa. Indeed, in 2010, the Council of Ministers of the Commission des Forêts d'Afrique Centrale (COMIFAC) adopted the Subregional Guidelines on the Participation of Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples and NGOs in Sustainable Forest Management in Central Africa. A survey of this subregional legal instrument highlights a genuine commitment by states to consolidate the benefits and the emerging rights that can improve the living conditions of vulnerable communities and strengthen the subregional regime of sustainable forest management. However, the effectiveness of the subregional guidelines hinges on the administrative acts and practical measures of member states to incorporate this instrument into their domestic legal systems and to enforce it.

Forestland policies and politics in Africa: Recent evidence and new challenges

“…Pacheco et al (2012) pointed out that from a bottom-up perspective, forest-dependent people, including indigenous groups and migrants, have increasingly gained unprecedented formal rights to forestlands since the mid-1980s. These experiences contrast with the African experience where forestland governance is still dominated oppressively by states and extractive or agri-business sectors (Oyono 2004;Boone 2012;RRI 2015;Assembe-Mvondo 2013). From a top-down perspective, the politics of massive forestland conversion, which greatly increased access to the Amazon rainforest 1 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=forestland&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=29&sm oothing=3 2 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/forestland frontiers, represents a permanent challenge (and threat to) for the rights of indigenous and other forest-dependent people.…”

“A Level Playing Field”? – What an Environmental Justice Lens Can Tell us about Who Gets Leveled in the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan

“…It furthermore recognizes there may be conflicts between state laws and 'traditional land ownership rights' (EC 2003, 18). These conflicts have since been documented in recent scholarship on FLEGT-VPA implementation (Lesniewska and McDermott 2014;Assembe-Mvondo 2013;Myers et al 2017). Likewise Hajjar (2015) has noted that informal sectors are often overlooked in the national policies of many countries.…”

The Tragedy of Forestland Sustainability in Postcolonial Africa: Land Development, Cocoa, and Politics in Côte d’Ivoire

“…An estimated 80% of the new agricultural lands (including plantations) are taken from the forestlands [10]. This situation has major social and environmental consequences for the local people who depend on the forestlands for their daily survival [11], and at the global level in terms reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), pressure from agriculture and changes in the vocation of the forestlands accelerate deforestation [12].…”