Cocoa cultivation is one of the major agricultural activities carried out by the populations living on the periphery of the Lobéké National Park (TNS Cameroon). Despite the interest in this activity, the cocoa farmers of Lobéké and its surroundings face several difficulties that prevent them from making a decent living from their products, a situation that pushes many to turn to other subsistence alternatives (deforestation, poaching, etc.) that threaten the integrity of the LNP and the TNS as a World Heritage site.
It is with this in view that FTNS aims to implement the project “Market-based approach to promote community engagement in wildlife conservation and climate change mitigation in the TNS landscape”.
Transformation, productivity and labelling…
This initiative aims to engage more than 7 villages and about 1490 households around the LNP to contribute to the protection of biodiversity, through the development of a sustainable cocoa value chain. The overall objective is to develop an economic value chain with the capacity to guarantee a higher income for farmers. This in turn should enable them to make a decent living (throughout the year and not just at harvest time) and consequently limit the alternatives of hunting and expansion of their cocoa farms into the Lobéké National Park in particular and the protected areas of the TNS in general.
At the social level, FTNS also has the ambition to contribute to better socio-economic equity, including the reduction of social abuses on the indigenous Ba’aka people. The latter are regularly recruited as labourers in the fields of the Bantu at very low wages and sometimes rent their cocoa farms (for those who own them) for a very low price. The project therefore aims to empower them and facilitate the development of their plantations to mitigate this social injustice.
On the climate front, the FTNS-bridge project also aims to facilitate the establishment of a sustainable mechanism while guaranteeing an increase in the value of cocoa from the peripheries of the Lobeke National Park. To this end, approaches to regulating pesticide use and introducing other sustainable farming techniques will be introduced. The completion of these innovations should facilitate the certification process, particularly that of the Rainforest Alliance Label. Obtaining this certification should significantly increase the value of the labelled agricultural products and allow people to actively contribute to the protection of biodiversity.
One of the project’s innovative aspects is cocoa processing. According to Mr. Romain Kana, FTNS Programme Officer, a kilogram of cocoa processed into butter could generate 3 to 4 times more value compared to the sale of the beans, thus greatly improving the incomes of local populations. This value chain could also contribute to the creation of several jobs.
In terms of funding, farmers generally lack adequate financial services to pre-finance their agricultural activities (purchase of seeds, fertilisers, etc). In order to facilitate their financial growth, the project also aims to contract a microfinance structure in order to facilitate the savings of the income generated by the farmers.
The cost of the 4-year project is USD 400,000 (XAF 248,767,600) of which 50% of the resources will be expected from the Bridge project through the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM) and the other half by FTNS and other partners, as counterpart funds.