ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some of the opportunities that are created by Local Agenda 21, and the blocks and barriers facing communities and local authorities in their work for sustainability. It provides a rationale for a strategy for community action that is informed by the work between local authorities, the voluntary sector and community groups in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Community in its many guises has become a popular notion and has gained political credibility. Though a difficult concept to define, community has become an apparatus, a vehicle and a mechanism for righting all wrongs. In Cameroon, the increasing incidence of rural poverty and government reluctance to implement new forest law has led to an increase in unsustainable logging for export as pulp, construction timber or veneers. Consultation and consensus-building must allow for differences, especially when the audience for consensus is so fragmented.
