A study to assess the availability of information from independent sources on compliance with social and environmental requirements in the forest sector in Cameroon, was recently carried out by the Association ‘Forêts et Développement Rural’ (FODER); within the framework of ‘Citizens voices for change: Congo Basin Forest Monitoring Project’ (CV4C).
The purpose of this study was to provide an overview of the current situation of information from independent sources on compliance with legal requirements in general, as well as social and environmental requirements in the forest sector with particular emphasis on quantity and quality, the availability of information from independent sources on compliance with environmental requirements, as well as external and internal social requirements, and analyses of the constraints in monitoring social and environmental aspects with the view of proposing possible improvements.
Results of this study found that companies engaged in forest certification are quite open and are ready to make their compliance auditors available to certification audit firms. However, CSOs working in non-mandated Independent Monitoring (IM) do not always have access to these documents. Those that regularly publish their reports have little more information on the legal requirements of the sector than other CSOs. This may be as a result of the approach, the method and the working instructions that are used during an External Independent Monitoring (EIM) mission in order to guarantee the quality and credibility of denunciations before publication. The forestry workers’ unions have varied access to documents according to their relationship with the company’s managers and the guarantee to keep confidential information provided to them.
Download the study for more information (available in French only).
