MOUNT CAMEROON
Cultural Forests Program

Mount Cameroon is an active volcano, the largest mountain in West Africa, and one of the most biologically diverse places on earth. Due to its extremely high species diversity and levels of endemism, and threats to its forests and biodiversity, Mount Cameroon is considered a national and global priority area for conservation. Indigenous groups living around Mount Cameroon retain strong traditional resource management systems that reflect deep historical and cultural connections to place, and migrants to the region have adapted their traditional management practices to the local environment, and learned from indigenous practices.

The Problem

The Mount Cameroon region is historically characterized by environmental, social and political change, and traditional management systems are inherently dynamic. However, the pace and intensity of change is greater today than at any time since colonial governments forcibly relocated villages up the slopes of the mountain, and established vast tea, rubber, oil palm, cocoa and other plantations that remain to this day.

Today, pressure on traditional knowledge, forests, and biodiversity comes from a range of sources, including expansion of commercial agriculture and associated land grabs driven by global and urban demand for food crops and oil palm. Traditional farms and fallows are replaced with industrial monocultures or crop farms that use pesticides and herbicides and, unlike traditional farms, work against rather than promote diversity. At the same time, spikes in demand for forest products like medicinal plants and bushmeat have led to their depletion, and oil exploration and logging are underway in some of the most biologically diverse forests around Mount Cameroon. The globalized economy, manifested in a range of commercial activities, is creating enormous pressure on the biological diversity of the region.

Alongside biodiversity and forests, traditional knowledge and practices are under pressure from similar and related causes. As forest and fallow lands degrade or are reduced in size, traditional management strategies that rely on a range of habitats are compromised. At the same time, globalization draws the young to towns, which offer few opportunities; HIV and other health concerns can divide and drain communities; and knowledge is no longer easily passed down from one generation to the next.

Households that once harvested and consumed a few dozen species of wild and cultivated greens, or a dozen mushroom species, today might use a handful. Wild yams and forest fruits – once central to local diets – are consumed rarely, if at all. The range of medicinal plants known and used has contracted, and elder healers now die without sharing their knowledge with the young. Traditional music, games and dance are seldom passed on and rarely practiced. There is an urgent need to support conservation of both biological and cultural diversity in the region.

A Solution: Cultural Forest Conservation

Cultural landscapes express long-standing, diverse and dynamic relationships between people and place that can contribute to biodiversity and forest conservation, and strengthen ties between local groups and their forest. The Mount Cameroon National Park was created to conserve biodiversity and eco-systems around Mount Cameroon – an important step for conservation. However, much of the forest and biodiversity in the region remains outside the park and is managed by local communities. As a result, conserving cultural landscapes and traditional management practices that rely upon and contribute to biological diversity is critical for conservation.

Traditional management systems can integrate a wide range of habitats, species and practices, adapt to and capitalize on seasonal change, and grow from local ecological processes and biological diversity. Rather than directed towards quick gain, they place a premium on endurance, resilience, and well-being over time, accommodating many social needs, material as well as symbolic. As a result, they not only create the basis for community, health, and sustainable livelihoods, but reduce risk in a complex and uncertain environment, helping local groups adapt to change, including now climate change.

Strengthening Endangered Traditional Management Systems

Communities around Mount Cameroon are working to shore up and celebrate what they know and have. This program is an effort by them and outside partners to:

• Celebrate the extraordinary cultures and environment of Mount Cameroon;

• Strengthen communities by bringing people together around traditions and our universal interest in food, health, games, music, and dance; and

• Bolster, revive and promote traditional management systems and the environments and cultures of which they are a part, including conserving biological and cultural diversity.

In response to the pressures faced by communities and forests around Mount Cameroon, the Mount Cameroon Cultural Forests Program documents traditional knowledge and management practices, develops knowledge sharing and outreach tools and education programs, and supports appropriate and effective policy by contributing research and analysis, and the views and experiences of local communities, to national and international policy processes.

RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES

The Mount Cameroon Cultural Forests Program builds on work undertaken in the region over the last 30 years through collaborations between local organizations and institutions, villages around Mount Cameroon, and international partners. The knowledge exchange tools and policy work of the program grows in part from this process. Research has included: household and market surveys; studies of key resources like food wrapper leaves, forest ropes and fruits, fish, wild greens, yams, mushrooms, medicinal plants, and spices; studies of household products, basket-making, musical instruments, games, and other traditional products sourced from the forest; documentation of the practices of healers, hunters, forest product gatherers, and others; surveys and mapping of useful species found in cocoa farms; and other studies intended to document and build understanding of traditional management practices in the Mount Cameroon region.

Knowledge Sharing Tools

The Mount Cameroon Cultural Forests Program develops knowledge sharing tools in order to:

• bolster young peoples’ interest in cultural traditions;

• support local schools seeking culturally-appropriate educational materials;

• help communities claim rights to land and resources and slow biodiversity loss;

• help migrants to the region learn new ways to manage resources and biodiversity; and

• give local communities a voice in the dramatic changes taking place in the region, including communicating more effectively with government, conservation agencies, business, and others.

Knowledge exchange tools include manuals and posters, videos, education and school programs, village celebrations, books, radio programs, and festivals and exhibits in towns.

Manuals and Posters

The program produces manuals and posters with drawings by local artists, myths, stories from older members of the community, information on current and historical uses of species in the area, how people in other parts of Cameroon and Africa use these plants, and their ecology, management, and importance in local livelihoods and cultures. The manuals include:

• Traditional Foods of Mount Cameroon. Wild, cultivated and semi- domesticated traditional foods of Mount Cameroon including wild greens, mushrooms, yams, food-wrapping leaves, natural sweeteners, forest fruits, and spices.

• Basket-making around Mount Cameroon. The range of species harvested, techniques used, processing of materials, concerns about scarcity of materials as forests recede, role of baskets in livelihoods, and basket-making techniques.

• Medicine as food, and food as medicine. Common and widely used medicinal plants, where they are found and how they are used, and the relationship between their use as medicine and as food.

• Home Gardens of Mount Cameroon. Medicine, food, decoration, protection, and toothbrushes - species shared between neighbors, and brought into the home garden and village from local forest and farm, and farther afield.

• Traditional musical instruments, music, and dance of Mount Cameroon. How to make musical instruments rarely constructed today (species used, how to fabricate), and the interlinked and disappearing music and dance of the region.

• Traditional games of Mount Cameroon. A history of local games, how to play them, and gather and make the pieces.

Video

A series of videos are produced in conjunction with manuals and posters on particular resources, products, and practices. To date, these include basket-making, wrapper leaves, and traditional food recipes, with the next stage of video, manual and poster production in 2024-25 focused on yams, mushrooms, and wild and cultivated greens and ‘vegetables’.

People and Plants has created a YouTube Channel to share the videos produced through our different programs in collaboration with local organizations and media teams from around the world. 

Wrapper leaves of Mount Cameroon

People and Plants has produced a video on wrapper leaves used for cooking traditional Bakweri and other foods around Mount Cameroon. Wrapper leaves are used around the world in traditional foodways. The video follows wrapper leaf harvesters in the forest, as they process the leaves, bring them to market, and use the leaves to prepare foods. 

Traditional Bakweri Baskets of Mount Cameroon

The Mount Cameroon Cultural Forests program produced a video series documenting and celebrating the traditional basket-making of the Bakweri people of Mount Cameroon. Baskets incorporate a range of forest and other species, and the harvesting and processing of materials, and making of baskets, grows from knowledge developed over generations.

Traditional Recipe series

A series of traditional recipe videos were produced in the Mount Cameroon region in 2022-2023 as part of an on-going educational program highlighting the links between food, culture and place, as well as threats to species and forests integral to important local foods. The videos include Martha Dialle preparing ngonyawembe, and Emilia and Cecilia Ndive preparing kwakoko and mbanga soup, in Likombe village. In Limbe, Sophie Eposi prepares kwakoko bible, and Immaculate Sambit prepares fufu corn, njamajama and fish.

education Programs

Programs in village and local town schools, and the botanic garden, include teaching materials based on the manuals, videos, and posters, as well as hands-on activities that include bringing elders to teach the young basket-making, wild food harvesting and preparation, musical instrument making, traditional games and dances. 

Working For More Equitable and Effective Law And Policy

The Team

Elias Litonga Ndive, Emilia Ndive, Cecilia Ndive, Sophie Eposi, Ndumbe Paul, Stella Asaha, Annette Dingha, Claudette Dingha, Sarah Laird, Stephanie Ewi Lamma, Christopher Fominyam Njoh, Rita Lysinge, Immaculate Sambit.

Partners

The Mount Cameroon Cultural Forests program is a multi-institutional collaboration that draws upon the unique contributions of a wide range of groups. These include villages around Mount Cameroon, local NGOs like Forests Resources and People (FOREP) and the Wildflower Foundation, the Limbe Botanic Garden, the Government of Cameroon, the Mount Cameroon National Park; and international NGOs and agencies.

The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Melza M. and Frank Theodore Barr Foundation