摘要：One of the major innovations of the January 20 1994 N° 94/01 law establishing the forest, wildlife and fisheries system in Cameroon is the involvement of local communities in the sustainable management of natural resources through the promotion and development of community forestry. Although eighteen years have passed since the introduction of community forestry in Cameroon, uncontrolled logging is still common, leading to further increases in deforestation and the impoverishment of local communities. Due to the illegal logging of community forests (CFs), Cameroon lost 1.25 billion CFA Francs in 2008 (Cuny, 2011). With the aim of controlling the entry of illegal timber into Europe, an action plan for Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade, widely known as FLEGT, was developed by the European Union in 2003. As a timber producing country, where 60% of timber was exported to the European market between 2005 and 2008 (Bayol et al., 2012), the State of Cameroon signed a FLEGT-Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) in October 2010. Through the agreement, Cameroon showed its determination to track timber logged under all forest permits, including timber from CFs, and to control the flow of illegal timber throughout its territory. As part of its VPA, a tracking system based on plastic tags with barcodes to be attached to all timber at every step of the chain of custody, starting from the inventory phase, was developed by Cameroon (TECSULT, 2007a,b). The tracking system yielded positive results in forest concessions and CFs where barcodes were used for export logs (Aubé and Ngomin, 2012). However, the system proved inappropriate in CFs where sawing of logs takes place where the tree is felled in the forest. Deficiencies also include issues regarding the technical, financial and human resources necessary to implement the system within CFs. Due to the abovementioned weaknesses, it has proven difficult to cross-check data, leading to delays in the processing and uploading of data collected across CFs in Cameroon’s SIGIF 2 (Second Generation Forest Management and Information) system. This paper reports research undertaken to determine which tracking system would be most appropriate for Cameroon’s CFs prior to the enforcement of its FLEGT-VPA.
