Nathalie Faure and Feja Lesniewska report from Douala, Cameroon, about the workshop ‘How can community control of forest lands be secured, delivered and maintained?’ This is a collaboration with ClientEarth’s partner organisations FERN, Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and the Cameroonian-based Centre for Environment and Development (CED).

The workshop was dedicated to the memory of Angeline Nzie who died on 12th September 2011. Angeline was an indigenous leader involved in many capacity building and education projects in the Bagyeli communities in Cameroon, as well as preparing counter-country reports to the African Commission for Human and People’s Rights and CERD.  Angeline was well known and deeply respected by many of the participants at the workshop. After five days of intensive presentations, discussions, group work and meetings we can reflect on the lessons learnt and milestones reached, as well as to map out how ClientEarth and its partners can act together to contribute to more effective and legitimate community-based forest governance in the central and western African countries. We had a little more time in Douala for this reflection and further discussions with partners who are similarly stranded thanks to our flight being delayed overnight! Much of the workshop discussions came out of our first day information sharing and scene setting by civil society and community representatives from each of the seven countries. These followed an initial presentation by Liz Alden Wily, an international consultant who has extensively researched land tenure reform, particularly within Sub-Saharan Africa, and recently worked closely with FERN and FPP on authoring reports on forest land tenure reform in Liberia and Cameroon. Liz analysed the status and implications of customary/indigenous rights to forest lands in Africa. She focused on land tenure problems and how these have been dealt with by a number of countries (especially in east Africa) such as Tanzania and Uganda. Liz concluded her empowering presentation by noting that community-based resource ownership is real modern law not the current system under which forest peoples, farmers and rangers are nothing more than tenants, or at worse squatters, on their own land.

Participants outlined the use, opportunities and threats to community-based land and natural resource ownership, drawing our attention to current land reform processes in Ghana, Cameroon, and Liberia which are important for the future of forest communities’ livelihoods in the coming decades and for future generations. A common concern was whether governments will take the opportunity to embrace community land tenure ownership and how communities would be involved directly in the process of proposing and realising those changes. A community representative from Liberia spoke about the challenges communities faced in engaging effectively with logging concession holders to agree social agreements which would secure benefits to the communities. On the second and third days of the workshop, participants considered what solutions exist to achieving community-based land and resource ownership. One Gabonese participant humorously asked that, given that Africa exchanged its land for bibles, was it not possible to give the bibles back and reclaim our land! Unfortunately, such a land contract was not officially signed with African leaders and probably would not stand scrutiny in a court of law. So our search for solutions went on to consider more practical options. These included substantive legal reforms but also the development of effective, fair and legitimate procedural rights within local community administrations as well as within the state. Each country in working groups sought to identify solutions to thorny issues they faced within their own context. These were followed by thematic groups which expanded on community mobilisation, conflict resolution and procedural rights. We facilitated the procedural rights working group, giving a presentation on key issues and discussing with participants the nature and practice of procedural rights -access to information, participation and access to justice - in their own country. We carried our discussions over into lunch as time, a constant pressure throughout the workshop, was insufficient for all to share all our stories. A clear example of civil society’s importance in realising effective procedural rights came from a Liberian participant who explained how the country’s recent Freedom to Information Act came about as a result of pressure by them to have access to information on state forest concession contracts. As it became clearer during the workshop that different countries were facing various realities, country representatives were invited to provide or share advice and lessons learnt to each other. This reinforced and added to the already-existing African Community Rights Network (of which many of the civil society participants are members), inter-country relations and strategic thinking.

Although the workshop primarily focused on securing property rights for communities over their land, the discussions frequently touched on two important international forest related processes: FLEGT VPAs and REDD+. These two processes require fundamental reforms in land tenure and forest governance, including procedural rights.

On the final day, the Cameroonian governmental delegation, including representatives from the Ministry of Land, the Forestry department and an advisor to the government focal point on REDD+, participated in the workshop. A Liberian NGO representative summarised key issues from the workshop to call for a change at the governmental level, stressing the need for all to work in solidarity with communities to overcome the apparently intractable complexities of land tenure reform. This was followed by a member of the Baka community who spoke of the challenges of inter-community conflicts and the impacts of forest concessions on indigenous people in Cameroon.

Responses from the governmental representatives illustrated the need for greater sensitisation to all of the issues, both problems and solutions, covered by this workshop. There was a willingness by all of the government representatives to engage in further dialogue about community land tenure reform and natural resource ownership.
The workshop has proved very inspiring, educational and empowering. It has certainly strengthened knowledge and provided examples of experience for the participants to draw on in their in-country work to secure community rights to land and natural resources. This all occurred despite a challenging workshop environment where all participants sat for hours on end in a basement with no natural light and only surfaced for drinks and refreshments  on the balcony to watch the constant rain. This caused a degree of cabin fever which led to participants to sing and dance on regular occasions.