Page 27 - Governing Congo Basin Forests in a Changing Climate • Olufunso Somorin

General Introduction and Research Setting
The Congo Basin forests represent a transboundary pool of natural resources
across six countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic 1 of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of Congo) in the central
region of Africa. With a forest area of about 242 million hectares (about 60% of
the total land area of the region, see Figure 1.2) representing 18% of the world’s
tropical forests, the Congo Basin forests constitute the second largest area of
dense tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon (FAO, 2010).
Approximately 100 million people inhabit the region with an annual growth rate of about 2.5%, including more than 150 different indigenous groups (CBFP, 2010; WWF, 2007). Sixty-two percent of the total population live in rural areas in or around the forests (Ndoye and Tieguhong, 2004; Tieguhong, 2008). They directly depend on forest resources for food and nutrition, shelter and livelihoods, and during periods of crop failures due to climate variability or disease infestation, forests often act as a safety net for these rural people (MINEFI, 2006; Ndoye and Awono, 2005; Sassen and Jum, 2007). The majority of the Congo basin populations sustain their livelihoods by direct use of forest ecosystem goods and services for household consumption.
In terms of biological diversity, the Congo Basin contains about 60-70% of Africa’s fauna and flora within the remaining contiguous tropical forest (Wilkie et al., 2001; CBFP, 2006), making it the ecologically richest natural ecosystem on the continent. Importantly, the forests contribute to national economies of the six countries through export of timber and valuable non-timber forest products for food and pharmaceutical industries (Ndoye and Tieguhong, 2004; Cerutti et al., 2008; Nkem et al., 2010). The activities in the region such as hunting, timber and non-timber forest products extraction are major sources of income in local economies. The governments receive millions of US dollars as logging fees (WWF, 2007) and timber exports (Sonwa et al., 2009). The timber sector, both formal and informal, contributes 10-15% of the regional GDP and is a major source of foreign exchange and employment (Cerutti et al., 2008; CBFP, 2010).
Beyond the tangible products supplied by the Congo Basin forests, they also offer important environmental services such as watershed management, soil and biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. For instance, the vegetation and the soils of the Congo basin contain vast amounts of
7