Forest Resources and Rural Livelihoods: The Conflict Between Timber and Non-timber Forest Products in the Congo Basin

By O. Ndoye, J. Tieguhong. 2004

123 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The forests of the Congo Basin are exploited by rural communities and timber companies at different scales to meet various conflicting interests. The forest contributes in several ways to rural livelihoods, but the growing importance of timber exploitation poses a threat to this livelihood's fabric and to the conservation of biodiversity. For example, 61% of the top 23 timber species exported from Cameroon have important non-timber values to local communities. The paper argues that in the process of forest exploitation, a balanced approach is needed to take into account the interests of both rural communities and timber companies. This will require, among other things, the development and implementation of sustainable forest management plans by timber companies, exclusion from harvesting of timber species that are important to local communities, compensation of timber companies for compliance with management plans, and the involvement of rural communities in monitoring the activities of timber companies.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89bd7cbc2184e1e650bab98f0cd2dccc8a1fd6b4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. Thomas Koellner
2. K. McNamara
3. Guy Jackson

In Sociology and Political Science

1. A. Larson
2. J. Ribot
3. K. McNamara
4. Guy Jackson

Citations in the corpus

• Effects of population and population pressure on forest resources and their conservation: a modeling study (2014, background): “To avoid this problem, balanced approach must be adopted by the timber companies and those communities, which exploit forests at a large scale (Ndoye and Tieguhong 2004).”
• The poverty of forestry policy: double standards on an uneven playing field (2007, background): “Sunderlin et al. (2005) specifically examine the poverty-alleviation potential of forests, particularly through community forest management, tree planting, non-timber forest products and environmental service payments (also see Ndoye and Tieguhong 2004).”
• An African account of ecosystem service provision : use, threats and policy options for sustainable livelihoods (2012, background): “…resource extraction through mining, large scale agriculture and unsustainable use of natural resources now threatens not only soil services and other ecosystem functioning, but also biodiversity, and livelihoods (Fa et al., 2001; Davies, 2002; Bowen-Jones; et al., 2003; Ndoye and Tieguhong, 2004).”