From December 2017 to May 2018, Cameroonian civil society organisations, who are members of the Coordination of the Standardised External Independent Monitoring System (SNOIE), conducted a total of five External Independent Monitoring missions, aimed at reporting alleged cases of illegal logging in the national forest domain, as well as those covered by legally assigned titles.
These missions were carried out in the villages of Doumo-Mama (Messamena sub-division, Upper Nyong division in the East Region); Bidi (Ngambè-Tikar sub-division); Ngoum, Ina, Manja, Wassaba, Oue and their surroundings (NgambéTikar and Yoko sub-divisions, Mbam-et-Kim division in the Centre Region); Mbandjock, Dingombi, Ikonde, Mapoubi and Ngwei2 (Ngwei and Pouma sub-division, Sanaga Maritime division in the Littoral Region of Cameroon); Makoure I and its surroundings (Lokoundje sub-division, Ocean division in the South Region of Cameroon).
The resources required to carry out these missions were raised within the framework of ‘Citizen Voices for Change: Congo Basin Monitoring Project (CV4C)’, implemented with the financial support of the European Union (EU) and other project partners.
During this six-month period, reports were produced by the following organisations: Forêts et Développement Rural (FODER), Support Programme for Livestock Production and Conservation of Biodiversity in Protected Areas of Cameroon (PAPEL) and the Centre for Alternative Local Development (CeDLA). During these investigations, several offenses were reported:
- Non- compliance with logging technical standards, as well as non-compliance with the terms of reference;
- Exploitation beyond limits;
- Non-compliance with logging standards;
- Fraudulent documents outlining logging operations;
- Exploitation by sales of cut in a national forest domain beyond the cut-off limits;
- Unauthorised exploitation in a national forest domain.
The summary of these IM reports produced via the SNOIE procedures can be downloaded here. (French only)
