Setting up palm oil plantations could cause deforestation

The potential for new laws governing the use of forest resources this year promises an opportunity that stems from the rapid loss of forest in this biologically diverse country. But the changes may ultimately not be what’s needed to save Cameroon’s forests.

Gathering from the northwest corner of the Congo Basin, Cameroon hosts a dizzying array of biodiversity, including life-list favorites such as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti) and forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis). But as countries outside of Africa begin to lose interest in deforestation concerns seen in the slowing or stopping of forest development entirely, foreign investors are also searching for new areas to expand the farming of lucrative equatorial crops with priority to palm oil. Amongst these expansions in Africa, primatologist and conservationist Joshua Linder said, “It’s going to come with a force.”

In the late 1980s, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund started working with leaders in Cameroon to find more money to govern.

“One way to do this in a country like Cameroon, where there was absolutely no industry, was to put the emphasis on exploitation of natural resources,” said Samuel Nguiffo, an environmental lawyer and founder and director of the Center for Environment and Development. So they changed forestry laws to encourage private investment in the conversion of forest into fast-growing rows of oil palm trees, among other things.

But since the regulations made it to the books in 1994, this move in forestry resources have amounted to communities losing their land to outside interests, conservationists looking out for rich habitat for biodiversity evaporate, and private companies complaining about taxes that were too high.

“After 20 years of implementation, [Cameroon’s forestry law] has proven its incapacity to appropriately manage conflicting interests around the forest,” Nguiffo told mongabay.com. The results of an ineffective system are born out by measures of forest loss, such as FORMA alerts, that show accelerating rates of deforestation in Cameroon.

The Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) leverages NASA satellite data of dense tropical forest and identifies 25-hectare areas that have likely lost tree cover. What’s unique about these alerts is that they measure possible deforestation almost as soon as it happens. According to data from Global Forest Watch, Cameroon has seen an uptick in these alerts over the past few years, by 75 percent in 2012 and 67 percent in 2013, over 2010 levels. This year, however, alerts are on pace for nearly 65 percent increase over last year.

But while the changes to Cameroon’s forestry laws could be an opportunity to give local communities more ownership over the lands they call home and standardize development to maximize economic benefits and environmental protection, Nguiffo said that in reality, they’ll put the onerous burden of proving ownership on communities before its members can harvest and sell products that come from the forest. What’s more, as they’re written now, they’ll likely remain unchecked outside investment in the conversion of forest to farmland easier, Nguiffo said. “This is a major step back in forest legislation,” he added.

Although there is still time for stakeholders to weigh in on the overhaul, Nguiffo doubts the law will end up incorporating meaningful changes for conservation before it’s voted on in parliament at the end of 2014. That leaves companies to put themselves to check or to be held to standards by independent boards like the RSPO – the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

According to Nguiffo, while this voluntary international body has brought important points to the forefront of the discussion of palm oil agriculture, it doesn’t have much power to enforce its recommendations and standards.

“A certification board is great in theory,” Linder said. But often, it fails to hold companies that have signed on to the standard of sustainability, and can be a vehicle for green washing. He points to companies like Herakles Farms, an American investor accused by Greenpeace and other environmental watchdog groups of disregarding Cameroonian law. Foreign investors in other countries are guilty of using the RSPO as an advertising tool, Linder said, while they do not adhere to its recommendations for protecting existing forests.

“These are companies that were members of the RSPO and violating every principle that they have,” Linder explained. “It tells consumers the wrong story about these companies.”

For example, the RSPO favors using “degraded” lands for oil palm plantations, but fails to provide a consistent definition of what the term means. For scientists, the term “degraded” means it’s no longer the rich habitat it once was. But some companies apply the term a bit more liberally – for instance, to areas that might have been exploited in the past but are in the process of revamping itself into a natural environment again.

Linder works with scientists who have studied the land that Herakles considers degraded.

“They found that there were lots of threatened and endemic animals there, lots of good forests there, and in no way was it degraded,” he said. Linder fears that palm oil investors are turning their focus away from the depleted tropical forests of Southeast Asia and toward equatorial Africa, inciting something of a “new wave” of oil palm plantation expansion in jungle-rich Cameroon and making the Herakles development a harbinger of things to come. He wrote about the threats that this wave might have on primate diversity in a 2013 report for the journal African Primates.

In the absence of a strong, conservation-directed national policy to govern oil palm expansion – something that Linder supports, if it’s done in the right way because of its vast economic potential – ill-conceived developments threaten to destroy more than just the forest where the plantation sits. FORMA alerts show that forest loss is presently occurring outside the boundaries of dedicated palm oil concessions. Linder pointed out that palm oil plantations often bring with them a host of low-wage laborers. This could cause further deforestation as they may cut down trees to clear land for homes at the peripheries of the plantations.

It could be just as potentially devastating as the taste for bushmeat may arise with such settlements. Hunting helps workers and their families supplement their diet and incomes. These new, large populations can quickly deplete surrounding forests of primates and other forest-dwelling species. Linder reported that in recent trips to Korup National Park, adjacent to the proposed Herakles Farms site, he has found it harder and harder to find native primates in forest that is otherwise “perfectly wonderful and mostly intact.”

Linder also is keenly aware of the responsibilities held by researchers with access to these areas to inform the public about what’s happening as a result of agricultural development for the world’s most popular vegetable oil. Rather than just serving as “historians for the decline of nature,” he said. Scientists and conservationists have a duty to speak up about environmental destruction that so often go unnoticed.

But instead of simply offering criticism of Cameroonian policies, they can work with the country’s government to write reports, inform ministry leaders, and even change the laws and policies governing forest use. Given the changes in forestry law on the horizon for Cameroon, it seems the time may be right for that kind of involvement from the scientific community.

“You don’t always have to rock the boat,” Linder said. “You can help row the boat, but row it in the right direction.”