Buea, Cameroon (Face2FaceAfrica) Governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and stakeholders who are deeply involved in the management and exploitation of forests held their 9th Mega Florestias International Conference in the old German colonial town of Buea, found in the West and Central Africa country of the Republic of Cameroon, on Monday.
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For nine years, the NGO Mega Florestias International has been assisting countries with large forests in sustainability.
Therefore, the participants taking part in the conference are coming from the 10 major and largest forestry countries in the world, including Cameroon, D.R. Congo, Gabon, Australia, U.S.A, Indonesia, Malaysia, Canada, Brazil, and Nigeria.
With the theme being “Forest in 300 Years and Actions Now to Secure Them,” conference participants are being given the opportunity to exchange ideas on how to better manage the forests in their respective countries.
This is the very first time that Mega Florestias is holding its conference in Africa.
“The Cameroon government has invited us to help them improve the challenges of managing and reducing poverty in the forest area, and with the discussions, we are looking for opportunities to share more on forestry experiences,” Andy White, coordinator of Mega Florestias, explained to Face2Face Africa.
Cameroon’s Minister of Forestry and Wildlife, Ngolle Philip Ngwese, who opened the conference, used the event as a beacon to participants to improve and manage the forests in their respective countries. “This conference is very important for us because we have to reconcile two divergent preoccupations: the biodiversity surrounding, which comes with lots of riches, and we have to see how to secure [them] so that these riches help alleviate poverty, which at the same time seems to be plaguing the local population,” the minister intimated.
In Cameroon, forests occupy a surface area of about 22 million hectares, representing 40 percent of the country’s total surface area that is home to an impressive biodiversity that greatly impacts the planet’s climate. Some 12 million hectares have been classified through forestry concessions granted in 113 forest units.
The forestry sector contributes about 4.9 percent to Cameroon’s GDP that generates about 150,000 jobs, with 96 percent of them in the informal sector. The sustainable management of forest resources is one of the cornerstones of government’s policy. In 1993, the forestry policy was instituted in Cameroon and implemented through the forestry environmental sector program, which is the hub of all sustainable management operations designed in association with development partners. It clearly defines the short- and- long-term operational goals of the country’s environmental sector.
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