The past few decades have seen protected areas undergo a pronounced expansion especially geographically poosing pressures and threats to its resources especially in the developing countries where livelihoods are dependent on it.(Anonymous 2010). A study carried out in Africa has proven that it has the highest percentage in the world of people living in less than $1.5 a day. (Anonymous 2010). With estimates of over 60% of rural Africans living below the poverty line (anonymous 2010; poverty in sub Saharan Africa is acute with over 90% of the poor being of the rural class. In Africa, over two- thirds of the continents’ 600 million people rely on forest products, either in the form of subsistence uses or as cash income derived from a wide range of timber and non- timber forest products (NTFPs). With forests linked to rural livelihoods, it presents both an opportunity and a challenge for achieving conservation and development goals. Forests are sources of food, shelter and revenue for more than 25 to 30 million people living within the Congo basin (Nzomo, 2005).
In terms of its conservation value, Korup National Park (KNP) is a stronghold for some of Africa’s most threatened primate species, many of which are only found in the Cross-Sanaga bioregion. Bushmeat hunting as in many protected areas worldwide, however, is intense and widespread in KNP (Linder and Oates, 2011) and the region’s forests are becoming increasingly fragmented and degraded from human threats and pressures such as logging, farming, and fuel wood production (charcoal) for sustaining of livelihoods (Oates et al., 2004).
Biodiversity conservation has emerged within the past two decades as one of the most important global challenges confronting national planners, world bodies, professionals and academics. Governments faced with increasing biodiversity loss as a result of human activities (threats and pressures) have resorted to the creation of protected areas as a strategy to both slow down habitat loss and/or degradation and eventually mitigate species extension and reduction rates by improving environmental awareness especially among indigenous people.
However, the creation of a protected area can have strong implications on the livelihoods of people inhabiting the forest and depending on it, especially those caught within its borders. (Ratner et al 2010; Le Billon 2001). Considering that alternatives (e.g. poultry farming, mixed farming etc.) are not given to the local communities to ease pressures exerted on its resources, and if available has a very limited extent, this can be a flagship of conservation efforts and development or a catastrophic failure (Mbile et al, 2003).
Natural resource conflict are disagreements and disputes over access to, control over, and use of natural resources (Sidway, 2005). Disagreements also arise when interests and needs are incompatible, or when the priorities of some user groups are not considered in policies, programs and projects. However, the inhabitants emphasize their losses far more than the benefits received from the protected areas (Maikhuri et al., 2001 and Wells, 1996). During the past few decades, there have been increased reports of crop damage and livestock loss caused by wild animals (Mishra 1997 and Waladji and Tchamba, 2003). Furthermore, lack of suitable compensation often exacerbates the life quality of local residents, and results in greater dissatisfaction with resource conservation in general. (Bajracharya et al., 2006 and Maikhuri et al., 2001) with such conditions leading to violent conflicts.
Reasons for conflict (power/ legitimacy, failure to adopt participatory approaches, economic vs social conservation views and different interests among various stakeholders)
1.1 Problem statement
Cameroonian community forests were designed and implemented to meet the general objectives of forest management decentralization for democratic and community management. (Mbile et al, 2000).The spread of management conflicts all over the country has shown that these broad expectations have not been met. A number of external (community vs. external actors) and internal (intra-community) conflicts are part of the causes blocking the expected outcome of Cameroonian forest and protected areas, fostering bad governance and loss of resources.
Cameroonian forests have a long history of regulatory and institutional settings. During the colonial period, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France had administrative units in place to regulate the forestry sector (Hédin, 1930; Letouzey, 1957), and after independence, new forest laws were adopted by the Republic of Cameroon in 1974 and 1981.In Cameroon, community forests were implemented after the 1994 new Cameroonian Forestry Law. This reform was the result of both political and economic driving forces (Brunner and Ekoko 2000). Decentralization was one of these drivers, under the assumptions of improving livelihoods by increasing monetary revenues, village infrastructures, forest self-management empowerment, and rural employment (Logo 2003). The decentralization reform also affected political structures and economic sectors such as the regional administration council and finance functioning (World Bank 1998).
The 1994 Forest and Wildlife policy aimed to enable the devolution of management authority to defined user communities and encourage the participation of other stakeholders, to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the nation’ s wildlife for the maintenance of environmental quality and a perpetual flow of optimum benefits to all segments of society. The objectives of the policy in respect to protected areas include; to establish a network of National Parks (e.g. Waza, Korup etc.), Sanctuaries and other Protected Areas (PA) to adequately conserve ecologically representative areas and biological corridors that maintain genetic continuity of flora and fauna through increased community participation in wildlife management in all forest areas and to encourage sustainable livelihood of fringe communities as well as developing incentive systems to promote investment in community-based eco-tourism and commercial wildlife conservation and development.
The conflict assessment is considered to be an indispensable component in the protected area-community conflict resolution framework (Lewis, 1996). Due to the great numbers of the areas and the complicated interactions between local people and the areas, most studies have focused on specific issues, such as hunting (Steinmetz et al., 2006), extraction of non-timber forest products (Dzerefos,2001), grazing (Cooper at al., 2005 and Wezel and Bender; 2004), crop damage and livestock depredation by wildlife and traditional ecological knowledge (Dowsley,2009 and Lewis et al., 2009). Although management effectiveness and management planning have already been widely employed to evaluate and ensure the appropriateness of protected area management (Hockings et al., 2000 and Thomas and Middleton, 2003), a few studies have assessed the protected area-community conflicts ad hoc and described the relationship between social context and environmental attitudes of local people and the conflict.
In this study, I evaluated social context variables, perceptions on protected area-community conflicts, and environmental attitudes of different stakeholder groups leading to conflicts (Farmers, local chiefs, administrative officials and NGOs). The principal task was to (1) Identify the various categories of conflict arising in protected areas in general, focusing on the Korup Park as a case study and (2) Better understand current management schemes and develop proposals for improvements at the case study and other Protected Areas (PA’s) as a whole.
1.2.1 Rural livelihoods, Conservation and threats to Korup National Park’s Resources
The forest is amongst other things an important source of food, household items, cash income and of important cultural significance for the people around these forest areas (Malleson, 2003). In forest milieus different components make up household economies or income and thus play an important role in their livelihoods. These include hunting for bushmeat, gathering and processing of NTFPs as well as farming activities (food and cash crop farming). Forests therefore are crucial to the lives of millions of people, many of whom have developed highly diversified livelihood strategies to use their forest in very different ways (Colchester et al, 2006). A wide range of different kinds of forest users which can be applied to various localities to accommodate the different social groups is shown in (Table1)