Index
Handout for the Department Meeting 20010205
Sunderlin WD, Ndoye O, Bikie H, Laporte N, Mertens B, Pokam J: Economic crisis, small-scale agriculture, and forest cover change in southern Cameroon. Environmental Conservation, 27(3): 284-290, 2000.
- Location:
- Southern 1/3 of Cameroon is humid tropical forest (est. 1.7 x 107 ha), where 0.4-1.0 % area annually suffers deforestation.
- Previous studies suggested the following main causation:
- Population growth -> more shifting cultivation -> deforestation, logging, transportation infrastructure, agricultural plantation
- Historical changes:
- Late 1970s-1985=Annual real GDP growth averaged 7% due to exports of petroleum, cocoa, and coffee.
- 1986=Decline of world prices of those and reduced oil production.
- 1987-1993=Annual real GDP growth was negative.
- 1989=Government purchase prices of coffee and cocoa were halved and governmental subsidies were greatly reduced.
- 1994=50% devaluation of CFA franc raised exports
- 1994-1997=Annual GDP growth averaged 1.7%.
- Three hypotheses (Aim of the study is to test them):
- More deforestation after than before crisis
- Slowing of rural to urban migration after crisis
- Shift from export crops to food crops after crisis
- Methods:
- Peri-urban Yaounde (38 villags/4078 households, of which 6 villages suffered field survey) and remote Ndelele (33 villages/552 households) as shown in Fig. 1
- To compare before and after economic crisis in 1986,
- Yaounde: 1973/1988 Landsat, 1987/1995 SPOT 42000 ha, previous field survey in 1974/75 (Franqueville, 1987) replicated in 1997.
- Ndelele: 1973/1986 Landsat, 1991/1996 SPOT 70000 ha
- Subjects in the field survey were, all household members born in the village and all full sons and daughters of the head born in the village (those who had ever lived outside were interviewed there).
- Field survey includes, other 54 villages/648 households in the Centre, asking respondents whether the household cleared forest in 1996/7 (cleared area, primary/secondary forest, chainsaw used?), whether planted area of cocoa, coffee, plantain and non-plantain food crops were larger, the same, or smaller in 1993 vs 1985, and 1997 vs 1993. Similar comparison for production and marketing of these crops were asked in the Centre and Ndelele.
- Results:
- Deforestation patterns by remote-sensing: Acceleration of deforestation in 1987-95 than in 1973-88 at Yaounde and in 1986-96 than in 1973-86 at Ndelele (data not shown)
- Population movement patterns: 38 population in Yaounde showed larger growth after crisis (4.1% per year) than before crisis (0.7% per year), one of which share 1/5 of total and should be considered as included in metropolitan Yaounde. Even if it is excluded, the annual rates of population growth in the resting 37 villages were 23.9% in 1987-97 and 1.6% in 1976-87 (Fig.2)
- Destination of migration (Fig. 3) showed the 3 stages: urban-to-rural before crisis / rural-to-urban after crisis / urban -to-rural again after devaluation. ==> hypothesis (2) was wrong. // Fig. 4 showed the net migration changed from out-migration to in-migration.
- Shift from export crops to food crops: Fig. 5 shows nearly half households didn't change the area of cocoa and coffee, more household increased coffee area than decreased, about same numbers were households increased cocoa area and decreased, about half households increased plantain and other food crops area.
- Fig. 6 shows the effect of distance from metropolitan Yaounde on the change of food crop areas; more households far from metropolitan Yaounde increased food crop area.