Boosting legal timber supply in Cameroon

Around three-quarters of timber sold on Cameroon’s domestic market is of informal origin. This is one of the challenges faced by domestic markets in tropical timber producing countries, which are overwhelmingly supplied by small, often informal or illegal, operators. These operators often lack the capability to comply with complex legality requirements in the absence of adequate support structures.

Cameroon has made significant progress in addressing some of these domestic market issues through the formalization of domestic market operators and the creation of an association of local wood artisans to support legal compliance within the segment of the forest sector. However, four major challenges remain:

• insufficient monitoring the flow of legal timber on the domestic market;
• complex regulatory measures hindering formalization;
• low demand for legal timber; and
• lack of connections between buyers and sellers.

To address these challenges, the FAO-EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Programme partnered with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) to increase the use of legal timber within Cameroon’s domestic market.

Read the full story here: https://www.fao.org/in-action/eu-fao-flegt-programme/news-events/news-d…