Cameroon's forest policy within the overall national land use framework: from sectorial approaches to global coherence?

SUMMARY In Cameroon, the forest sector competes with other sectors in contributing to achieve national development goals. The current trend in policy making in this wise is characterized by sectorial approaches. This poses serious threats to sustainable forest management in the absence of a national land use planning, and an undervaluation of the contribution of forests to the national economy due to an ever increasing informal economy and the way other forest products and services are framed. The study builds on policy subsystem governance fragmentation and crosssectorial policy impact frameworks to highlight the reality that, despite efforts in setting bridges between sectorial development policies such as mining, forest, agriculture, energy and infrastructures, information asymmetry poses bias to policy-makers' knowledge for rational policy hierarchy setting and global policy coherence in Cameroon. And despite this reality, some examples show that policy-makers still can innovate to facilitate offsetting among competing land use sectors for the sake of a more sustainable development pathway.