The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is planning to redistribute forest taxes to improve local livelihoods. Photo by Abdon Awono
The importance of good governance in implementing forest-related poverty reduction schemes has been highlighted in a recent report on Cameroon forestry tax initiatives aimed at helping local people.
According to CIFOR's Paolo Cerutti a co-author of the report, Forest Taxation in Post 1994 Cameroon*, using forest taxes to reduce poverty have shown mixed results in Cameroon.
"If forest taxes are to reduce poverty, a large amount of redistributed money is not enough," Cerutti says.
Cerutti discussed the findings of the report during a forestry workshop in Kinshasa for the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is considering implementing a similar scheme.
Cameroon was the first Central African country to establish a re-distributional system. It decided in 1994 to transfer 40 percent of the area logging fees to communities that neighbor logging concessions and 10 percent to local villages.
While the system was a good idea in theory, according to the report it failed in practice due to its lack of transparency and accountability.
The report gives the example of Kongo, a village in the east of Cameroon. Kongo neighbors a big logging concession, which entitles it to a share in the 10 percent of logging fees intended for village communities.
In theory, this money is handed over to local villages by the governing rural council. But as seen in Kongo, what happens in practice is often quite different. According to the report, Kongo received nothing from the council for 2001-03 when it was legally entitled to US$ 6,2000.
Says Cerutti, "We analyzed several villages like Kongo and found that in most cases, the local population does not receive its share of the forestry taxes."
The 40 percent of tax revenue channelled to rural councils for implementing development projects also appears to have had little practical impact.
"We didn't notice any clear sign of improved livelihoods over the last six years in the analyzed villages," Cerutti says.
Because of these governance failures in Cameroon, Cerutti and his co-authors emphasized the need for transparency and sound control measures in their presentation to the government of the DRC government.
"To make the system efficient, the government must inform local communities about their rights and build their managing capacities," Cerutti says, "The management of the money should be systematically controlled and the responsibilities and sanctions for mismanagement stated in the law."
|
* ‘Forest Taxation in Post 1994 Cameroon’ will be available in the near future. The report is a joint publication between the World Resources Institute (WRI) and CIFOR. It was produced by CIFOR’s Palo Cerutti and Phil René Oyono in collaboration with WRI’s Karl Morrison and Pierre Méthot. |
Related links