ABSTRACT
In 1994, cameroon launched a comprehensive restructuring of its forestry policy that had hitherto been dominated by government agencies. Driven by devolution and decentralization, many management rights and responsibilities were transferred to other actors—local communities and communes (local governments)—allowing them to create community forests and council forests and to have direct access to forestry revenue (Carret 2000; Milol and Pierre 2000; Fomété 2001; Bigombé Logo 2003). A new zoning plan was also designed to define regimes for forest access. The paradigm of adaptive collaborative management (ACM), based on the interactions, collaboration, and mutual learning of stakeholders (Lee 1999; Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2000), made it seem relevant and innovative for forest management systems under these policy conditions. Thus ACM research was planned for Cameroon with its new institutional developments and strong demand from stakeholders for more participation, collaboration, reciprocal adaptation, and horizontality (Ebene and Oyono 2000; Diaw and Oyono 2001).
