Pygmies have always been mysterious figures, appearing silently out of the deepest forests and disappearing just as suddenly.

Except for curious anthropologists, explorers and the occasional Hollywood filmmaker, modern society has all but passed them by

Now their survival is threatened as they find themselves increasingly marginalized. Their mobile lifestyle means they are being ignored by the authorities and they are not equipped to deal with the forces that are taking control of the forests they have lived in for thousands of years.

Pygmies live throughout the immense wet forests of central Africa. Similar tribes live in the deep forests of Amazonia and in Indonesia. Historically, they are hunter-gatherers, roaming over large areas of forest, which they regard as their own.

Their territories overlap the areas occupied by more settled communities, but this did not cause problems in the past because of the availability of forest resources. The Pygmies' only contact with the external world was in casual trade with other local communities.

Nowadays things are different. Phil René Oyono from CIFOR's Central and West Africa Regional Office in Cameroon has been studying the Baka pygmies in the east of the country.

“The Baka society has been changing significantly for decades,” he said. “There are many reasons for this, such as intermarriage with the local but ethnically different Bantu groups, the chance to pursue paid work and the influence of Western education.”

In fact, the Pygmies have long since stopped being exclusively hunter-gatherers. In the last 40 years they have begun working as labourers for the Bantu farmers or opening up small food plots themselves. Nevertheless, they are still a neglected minority. Cameroon’s forestry law, although aimed at decentralization, makes no mention of any special concern for the Pygmies. No major national programme, including the National Environment Management Program or the Forestry and Environment Sector Program, makes any reference to them.

“We have found that even when they are included in development initiatives, they are still neglected,” said Oyono. Since 2001, four village communities embracing different ethnic groups have managed forests in the Lomié area, as part of a decentralization experiment, with each community setting up a management committee.

But a recent study showed that Pygmies are not involved in the committees or in any decision making process. It is no surprise the Pygmies feel dispossessed. A recent social survey found that they felt the Bantu and the State held all the rights to define limits in the forest.

The local Bantu groups are not always sympathetic. “We have been calling for compensation for the loss of the forest, which our ancestors bequeathed to us, and for it to be managed as a reserve today, but the Pygmies of this village have never shown any interest in the cause,” said Liboire Mpouam, a Bantu inhabitant of a village on the edge of the Dja Biosphere Reserve near Lomié.

“It seems that they (the Pygmies) do not consider it to be their problem.”

Commercial logging of the forest is the primary economic interest in the areas where the Pygmy families live. Yet because of their marginalization, they derive little benefit from this activity.

As one Pygmy eloquently stated, “We Pygmies are also human beings. We were living in this forest before these villagers claiming now to be our patrons joined us. The forest was our life: we were in the forest and the forest in us. They (the Bantu) asked us to come and live here. The result is bad. You have vehicles, clothes and money. Do you want us to be like you now that we are living in villages like the Bantu?”

“Unfortunately, nobody is taking care of us. We are abandoned. Logging companies don’t care about us. We see them every day going into the forest of our ancestors and our spirits, to log timber. Maybe one day we will go back to the forest, our forest, but to do what and to live how? The Government is ignoring us.”

According to Oyono, the best form of devolution of forest management responsibilities in Africa will come about when both rights and functional obligations are transferred to the peoples who depend more on the forest.

“Greater attention must be given to developing forestry and social policies that transfer specific rights to the forest populations. Measures like these could help to redress the inequities facing the Pygmies,” Oyono said.

CIFOR's Yanti Kusumanto has encountered similar issues in Indonesia. The Pelepat watershed in western Jambi in Sumatra is home to several groups of deep forest dwellers, called Orang Rimba. They mainly gather forest resources for their own consumption or trade.

Traditionally, the Orang Rimba exchange forest products like rattan and latex for luxuries like cigarettes, sugar or rice.

“Now, as large-scale forestry operations deplete the forest resources, the Orang Rimba depend increasingly on trade with village communities,” Kusumanto said.

The Orang Rimba around Pelepat is a fluid group of core families that have ties to other families. Each may cluster with other families and form subgroups but remain associated to the main group. Very recently they have been trying to get the village authority to formally recognise them as residents. This need emerged due to conflicts with other Orang Rimba groups over forest resources and decreasing forested areas.

“The Orang Rimba's customary concepts of resources access and control have been disregarded in past and present forest policies and they have been marginalized relative to other people at the site. Because of their nomadic lifestyle, administratively the group does not belong anywhere,” Kusumanto said

In Cameroon, Oyono thinks the changes at work are irresistible. “Participatory management of the forests is reaching even the most remote regions. The nomadic way of life of the Pygmy and other tribes like them is coming to an end, as they are not equipped to meet the challenges of modern forest development.”

But Oyono firmly believes that as the original residents of the forest, they have more rights to it than many others. According to Oyono, the question that needs answering is: “How do we protect these rights?” (PS)