EU helps Cameroon fight $100 mln/yr illegal logging
23 Aug 2007 16:36:45 GMT Source: Reuters
By Tansa Musa YAOUNDE, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The European Union and Cameroon have agreed to investigate illegal logging, which often benefits from official connivance and costs the central African country an estimated $100 million a year, a government minister said. Timber is big business in Cameroon's tropical forests, with 700 companies and individuals licensed to fell trees. But many more, often individuals working alone with a chain saw, cut wood illegally to sell locally as rough timber or cooking charcoal. "Every year our country loses about 50 billion CFA ($103 million) due to these illegal forest exploitation practices, making it impossible for the forest sector to play its expected role in the economy," Forestry and Wildlife Minister Elvis Ngolle Ngolle said after meeting EU diplomats late on Wednesday. Ngolle Ngolle said he had agreed with ambassadors from EU countries to set up a six-member committee to investigate illegal logging and how to stop it. Cameroon is in the early stages of discussions with Brussels on an agreement regulating timber exports to the European Union aimed at curbing illegal logging. Ghana and Liberia are also in talks on similar agreements. Ngolle Ngolle said officials at his ministry were part of "a network of complicity" with those illegally felling trees. He said the government planned to fund its own study on illegal logging and its effect on the country's economy. Illegal felling of protected species and trees smaller than the legal minimum diameter undermined sustainable forestry management, while some licensed operators deliberately underestimated the volume they logged, he said. Cameroon's forest covers some 19.6 million hectares, of which 12 million ha is classified as productive forest, including 5.4 million ha allocated for logging. The country produces an estimated 2.4 million cubic metres of wood annually, although an aide to Ngolle Ngolle said exact statistics of the illegal trade were hard to come by. "Surveys carried out recently in some parts of the country suggest that these forms of logging involve larger volumes of timber than those from industrial logging," said the aide, who declined to be identified. "Their impact could be more serious than that of industrial logging, especially as they are not subject to any kind of regulation," he said.
