Private road sparks fears for Cameroon’s Ebo Forest
Amindeh Blaise Atabong, Mongabay
August 10, 2022
See link
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/private-road-sparks-fears-for-cameroons-ebo-forest/
for photos.
Since March, bulldozers have opened around 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, of
dirt road running north from the village of Kopongo in Cameroon across a
forestry concession and into the heart of Ebo Forest. A group calling
itself the Ebo Forest Development Committee (CDFE) is behind the project,
and says the road is needed to connect villages around Ebo — communities
displaced from the forest proper a generation ago — and stimulate the local
economy. Conservationists say the road will serve only to expose the forest
to illegal logging. The ministry of forestry purports to know nothing about
the entire project.
Ebo Forest covers 200,000 hectares (490,000 acres) of biodiverse lowland
and montane forest in southwestern Cameroon. It’s home to many threatened
species, including forest elephants, gorillas and a population of
Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees — of particular interest to researchers
because of their use of sticks to harvest termites’ nests and stones as
tools to crack nuts open. People living in the areas surrounding the forest
rely on it for food, fuel, and herbs.
The CDFE, whose members are drawn from the ranks of local politicians and
businessmen, held a ceremony to launch their project in the village of
Ndokbaembi in May. In a letter announcing the launch, CDFE executive
president Samuel Dieudonné Moth, who is also a member of parliament for
Nkam division, said the group had approached undisclosed “private
operators” to build the road. A local news outlet, Journal du Cameroun,
reported that the road is being built by a logging company.
Moth wrote that the road was “very important and symbolic for the Banen
people” who were expelled from Ebo Forest beginning in the late 1950s by
colonial authorities during Cameroon’s struggle for independence. Reached
by phone, Moth told Mongabay that the CDFE will forge ahead with the road
project “even if it means digging it with our hands,” but did not respond
to further questions.
May’s launch was also attended by the prefects, or centrally appointed
heads, of Sanaga-Maritime and Nkam divisions, where Ebo is located. Journal
du Cameroun quoted Nkam’s prefect, Che Patrick Ngwashi, as saying “This
road represents development. It will allow populations displaced from their
home 60 years ago to return.” He added that “this must not become an open
door for uncontrolled logging or poaching.”
But conservationists — and, they say, many Banen in the 40 communities in
the area — fear this is precisely what will happen.
In an open letter sent to diplomatic missions including those of the EU and
the U.S., and copied to the prime minister of Cameroon, conservation
organizations, including the Center for Environment & Development (the
Cameroon member of Friends of the Earth), Friends of the Earth Netherlands,
Greenpeace Africa, and Green Development Advocates, a Cameroonian
organization which works with forest communities on sustainable
development, said the road exposes the forest to further illegal logging
and settlement while failing to connect existing villages and support local
livelihoods.
They say the road is illegal because no environmental impact assessment has
been carried out and it is being built through a forest that is, for the
moment, unclassified.
“The narrative from the road builders is that the road will serve local
communities, but that is utter nonsense,” Danielle van Oijen, international
forest program coordinator at Friends of the Earth Netherlands, told
Mongabay. “The road goes right through the middle of Ebo Forest and does
not connect villages. Abandoned villages in the northeast of the Ebo Forest
area can easily be connected from [that side] and not from the south. The
current road benefits the logging company and it makes it easier to haul
out logs.”
Van Oijen added that a good road supporting local development is necessary,
but it should be routed around Ebo Forest, improving the tracks that
already connect the villages. The letter calls on donor countries to both
pressure the Cameroonian government to investigate the CDFE’s project and
to commit funding to working with communities to develop a better-planned
road and other support for local development.
Mongabay contacted the administrative authority in Nkam to verify whether
communities had been consulted and the required environmental assessment
and other approvals had been filed for the road, but did not receive a
response by publication time.
The forest’s status has been in limbo since 2012, when plans to designate
it as a national park were shelved in the face of opposition by the
majority of local residents, who saw this as permanently alienating them
from their ancestral land. In 2020, the government created two logging
concessions in the forest, covering 68,000 hectares (168,000 acres), but
these were immediately suspended amid an outcry from conservationists.
Data from Global Forest Watch show accelerated forest loss in the logging
concession south of Ebo, known as Forest Management Unit 07 002, with more
than 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) of forest cover lost in 2021. Sources
with knowledge of the area told Mongabay that it’s currently being logged
without an approved management plan.
As well as approaching foreign embassies, conservationists have been
holding meetings with Cameroonian officials to push them to stop
construction of the road. Van Oijen pointed out that Cameroon’s government
has signed multiple pledges and is bound by the Paris climate agreement and
the Convention on Biological Diversity.
“Now these words need to be turned into action. If they commit to
protecting Ebo Forest and integrate economic development for the villages,
they will set an important precedent for Congo Basin forest protection,”
Van Oijen said. “They need to start putting nature and people first rather
than profit for companies and their cronies.”
In official correspondence dated July 25, 2022, Jules Doret Ndongo, the
minister of forestry and wildlife, asked the regional head of the ministry
to investigate.
“I have the honour to ask you to lead to the field, without further delay,
a joint regional brigade of the regional forest control service, in order
to verify allegations of the construction of a road crossing the Ebo forest
and illegal logging under the guise of the construction of this
infrastructure,” the letter reads, suggesting that the road does not have
formal approval from the central government.
Building a road has to be done within the framework of the law, said Ranece
Jovial Ndjeudja, the Congo Basin forest campaign manager at Greenpeace
Africa. “The current process is being done without proper community
consultation, and does not serve the legitimate aspiration to development
of Banen communities,” he told Mongabay. “It is important to halt the
ongoing process to avoid irredeemable harm to Banen community’s interests,
to the valuable Ebo Forest and biodiversity.”
In 2020, when civil society groups raised the alarm over the imminent
destruction of the species-rich forest, the government suspended the
logging concessions. It remains to be seen how the government will react to
this latest threat as local communities remain silent for now.
https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/private-road-sparks-fears-for-cameroons-ebo-forest/