Cameroon:NGOYLA MINTOM PROJECT

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The development objective of the Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Ngoyla-Mintom Forest Project for Cameroon is to improve the conservation and management of the core area and improve access to income-generating activities for local communities in the project area. There are three components to the project. The first component is strengthening government and civil society capacity for participatory planning and management of the core areas. The objective of this component is to strengthen the capacity of the government and civil society to manage priority 'core areas' for conservation and low impact community use. 'Core areas' means one or more areas selected for conservation guided by their high biodiversity conservation value, and their role as critical corridors. These core areas within the Ngoyla Mintom forest massif will be selected on the basis of biological surveys currently being undertaken by Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the meso-zoning plan that is currently being prepared under two separate projects. This Global Environment Facility (GEF) project will not actually contribute to the preparation of the meso-zoning plan, which should already be advanced or completed by the time the project becomes effective, but will rather focus on participatory planning and management of the identified core areas. The second component is design and implements a Livelihood Support Mechanism (LSM). This component will design and pilot a LSM that will address immediate social and development needs of the local communities and indigenous peoples with priority given to those groups that have traditional use rights in the forest and in particular those members of the local community who stand to lose from reduced access to the forest resulting from the future classification and sustainable management of the core area(s) identified for conservation / low impact forest uses. The third component is design and implements a long term monitoring and evaluation system for the Ngoyla-Mintom Forest Massif; and project management.