Bulletin Series
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
 
Resource Use in the Trinational Sangha River
Region of Equatorial Africa: Histories, Knowledge
Forms, and Institutions
HEATHER E. EVES, REBECCA HARDIN, STEPHANIE RUPP, VOLUME EDITORS
JANE COPPOCK, JOSEPH A. MILLER, BULLETIN SERIES EDITORS
Yale University
New Haven , Connecticut
•
1998
In Memoriam
JOSEPH A. MILLER
ELISABETH COPET-ROUGIER
The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Bulletin Series, begun in 1912, issues faculty and student
monographs, symposia and workshop proceedings, and other reports of environmental interest. For information
about ordering copies of this or other Yale F&ES Bulletins, contact: F&ES Bulletin Series, Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, 205 Prospect Street New Haven CT 06511 USA or http://www.yale.edu/forestry/resources
Volume Editors Heather E. Eves, Rebecca Hardin, and Stephanie Rupp
Bulletin Series Editors Jane Coppock and Joseph A. Miller
Bulletin Series Design Richard Solaski
Printing Yale University Reprographics and Imaging Services (RIS)
Production Radhika Wijetunge, Militsa Plavsic, Tiara Valentino-Perkins, Peggy Sullivan, and Dottie Scott
Translation and Copy Editing Philippe Auzel, Thomas Bouix, Katherine Collin, Ghislain Dubois,
Christopher Duncan, Patrice Etoungou, Monique Froment,
Charles Mironko, Cora Monroe, Estienne Rodary, Richard G. Ruggiero,
Andre Siamundele, Pierre Armand Roulet, Edward Tilson,
Valerie Wolrich
Cover Design Russell Shaddox, Yale RIS
Cover Photo Richard G. Ruggiero
Margin Illustrations Bernardin Nabana (courtesy of J. C. Thibeaud and WWF-US, RCA)
Paper Mohawk Satin, Cream White, 60 lb. text, acid free, recycled
The Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) is a USAID-sponsored consortium of agencies, including
The World Resources Institute, The World Wide Fund For Nature–U.S., and The Nature Conservancy. It provided partial
funding to complete that offered by Yale University for this volume, and for the conference on which it is based.
Bulletin Number 102
ISSN
-
CODEN BYSSDM
© Yale University. Permission is granted to reproduce articles from this volume without prior written consent.
The text of this Bulletin is available on the Sangha River Network web page at http://www.yale.edu/Sangha
Note to Readers
This volume is based on an international conference, “Natural Resource Use Relations in the Trinational Sangha River Region of the
Northwest Congo Basin,” held at Yale University in September 1997.
In recognition of the bilingual context in which conservation occurs
in the three countries of the Sangha region — Cameroon, Central
African Republic, and Congo — all sessions of the conference were
conducted simultaneously in French and English. This publication,
which is a complete rendering of the conference papers and discussion sessions, is available in its entirety in both French and English.
For information on ordering the volumes either separately or together, please contact http://www.yale.edu/forestry/resources or
http://www.yale.edu/sangha or e-mail sangha@yale.edu
The Editors
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1
PREFACE
Alison Richard
6
INTRODUCTION
Rebecca Hardin, Stephanie Rupp, Heather E. Eves
8
SECTION I: DYNAMICS OF THE PAST
Section Overview
Rebecca Hardin
29
Introductory Remarks
Robert Gordon
37
Introductory Remarks
Takeshi Inomata
39
New Carbon 14C Datings of Iron Metallurgy in the Central African
Dense Forest
Raymond Lanfranchi, Jean Ndanga, Henri Zana
41
Political-Economic History of the Upper-Sangha
Elisabeth Copet-Rougier
51
The Upper-Sangha in the Time of the Concession Companies
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch
72
Discussion and Comments
Alain Froment, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Barry Hewlett, David Wilkie
Robert Harms (Moderator)
85
SECTION II: INTERACTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE FORMS IN CONSERVATION:
NATURAL SCIENCE, SOCIAL SCIENCE, AND INDIGENOUS
KNOWLEDGE
Section Overview
Stephanie Rupp
91
Introductory Remarks
David Watts
95
Transnational Ecological Monitoring of the Sangha Basin: Natural Science Perspectives
Roger Fotso
98
Human Migration in the Protected Zones of Central Africa: the Case
of the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve
Zéphirin Mogba, Mark Freudenberger
104
Indigenous Knowledge and Anthropological Constraints in the Context
of Conservation Programs in Central Africa
Daou Joiris
130
Discussion and Comments
Serge Bahuchet, Diane Doran, Edmond Dounias, Sarah Elkan,
Eric Worby (Moderator)
141
SECTION III: INSTITUTIONS AND APPROACHES TO CONSERVATION
IN THE SANGHA RIVER REGION
Section Overview
Heather E. Eves
158
Introductory Remarks
Stephen R. Kellert
166
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Organizational Overview: Central
African Programs
Amy Vedder
169
The Nouabalé-Ndoki Project: Development of a Practical Conservation
Model in Central Africa
Richard G. Ruggiero
176
Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) Organizational
Overview: Trinational Sangha River Region
Guy Debonnet
189
Political Conflict and Forest Management in Northern Congo
Hans Hoffmann
196
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-US) Organizational Overview:
Dzanga-Sangha Reserve, Central African Republic
Richard Carroll
198
A Critical Analysis of Three Approaches to Tropical Forest Conservation
Based on Experiences in the Sangha Region
Allard Blom
208
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: History, Social Science,
and the Conservation of Nature
Steve Gartlan
216
Discussion and Comments
Paul Elkan, Uwe Klug, Andrew Noss, Manuel Thuret
William Ascher (Moderator)
227
SECTION IV NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS FOR
TRINATIONAL MANAGEMENT
Section Overview
Rebecca Hardin, Heather E. Eves, Stephanie Rupp
235
Evolution of Natural Resource Policy in Cameroon
Joseph Mewondo Mengang
239
Conservation of Biodiversity in the Central African Republic
Urbain Ngatoua
249
Development of a Trinational System of Conservation: A Ten-Year
Perspective
J. Michael Fay
253
Strategies of Influence for the Conservation of the Sangha River Basin:
Insights from the Policy Sciences
William Ascher
259
Roundtable Discussion
272
LIST OF ACRONYMS
283
SANGHA RIVER NETWORK
285
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Acknowledgements
This volume, the conference on which it is based, and on-going
interdisciplinary, international collaboration through the Sangha River
Network would not have been possible without the support and assistance of colleagues, mentors, institutions, friends and family. Since the
conference, book, and network are so inextricably entwined, we take
this occasion to express our gratitude to those involved in all three, at
the risk of going on at great length and even then forgetting some who
contributed. By gratefully mentioning those who helped us, we do not
implicate them in the shortcomings of the Sangha River projects, of
course. Errors that still stand in the publication are entirely our own.
The impulse behind our interdisciplinary work on the Sangha
River region emerges from our respective experiences there. For
many years, the three volume editors have been conducting both
research in the region and conversations about how such research
might be more collaborative, more accessible to stakeholders in the
region, and more involved in building local capacities for analysis and
action on environmental issues.
To this end, since 1995 we have held several gatherings in Central Africa, both formal and informal. From these contacts emerged
the community, some of whose members came to participate in the
Yale conference, many at great expense in time and effort. We thank
each of them. It was a moving experience to see so many familiar
faces finally in one place, sharing ideas, debating, discussing, and
developing what we hope will become a long term dialogue about
our different approaches to common conservation, development,
and educational objectives.
The initial concept for the Sangha River conference emerged from a
discussion in September 1996 with Kira Hall, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, who convinced us of the value of graduate
student-initiated conferences. As the organizing concepts for the conference solidified, several Yale professors offered intellectual support. Eric
Worby, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and
Stephen R. Kellert, Professor of Social Ecology at the Yale School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies, have served as faculty advisors for
the project since its inception. They have guided us through the complex process of crossing boundaries among disciplines and between
academic and applied work. Professor James Scott of the Department of
Political Science and the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale, and
Professor Robert Harms of the History Department at Yale also supported the conference project at crucial junctures. We offer special
thanks to Professor William Foltz of the Political Science Department
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at Yale who led an interesting discussion for conference participants
about the complicated political situation of French-speaking equatorial
Africa.
Despite the odds against graduate students raising the necessary
funds for such a large international conference, a variety of offices,
departments, and organizations at Yale University enthusiastically
provided financial support. Primary funding came from the Office of
the Provost at Yale University. Associate Provost Arline McCord generously committed half the amount requested in our proposed budget for
the conference, thereby encouraging others to join in supporting our
efforts. After the successful conclusion of the conference, her office
and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies committed
the bulk of the funds necessary for the publication and dissemination
of this volume. Financial commitment from the Kempf Memorial Fund
and the Provost’s Office was unparalleled, and Arline McCord’s intellectual support and personal guidance have seen the project through
from the beginning until the present.
Provost Alison Richard of Yale is our professor and has acted as
an academic thesis advisor for three successive Ph.D. dissertations on
the Sangha River region, those of Richard Carroll, Melissa Remis, and
Rebecca Hardin. She has consistently provided enthusiastic support for
this project without letting us lose sight of its role relative to our individual academic careers. We also thank Nancy Ruther, Associate Director of the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, who met
with us on numerous occasions to discuss the development of our
work, consistently improving our thinking and planning. We cannot
thank Arline McCord, Alison Richard, and Nancy Ruther enough for
their inspiration and encouragement.
Support within Yale ultimately came from several quarters. We
thank the faculty and administration of the Department of Anthropology, especially Professor and Chairman of the Department William Kelly, Associate Dean Gordon Geballe and former Dean Jared
Cohon of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and
Stanley Gartska, Deputy Dean of the School of Management, for their
contributions. The Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the
Program in Agrarian Studies, and the Council on African Studies also
gave valuable financial and intellectual support. The Coca-Cola World
Fund at Yale, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the McDougal
Graduate Student Center at Yale, and the Tropical Resources Institute
of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies also provided
funds for our endeavors.
As we reached beyond Yale to other organizations, we were
buoyed by enthusiastic and generous support from Laurent Magloire
Somé and Jim Graham at USAID’s Central Africa Regional Program
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for the Environment (CARPE), and Richard Carroll, Mark
Freudenberger and Antoine Mokombo at World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF-US) in Washington D.C. The German agency
Gesellschaft für tuhniche Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS) also provided financial support for conference participant travel.
Numerous people contributed to the complicated logistical
arrangements necessary for the conference. Donna Perry, an
Africanist graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, was
the logistical coordinator for the Sangha River conference. Her
expertise and dedication provided an enormous contribution to its
success. Donna Delbuco, Business Manager for the Department of
Anthropology, stalwartly handled our accounts during the intricate
conference stage, and the complex process of reimbursements in
multiple currencies at the conclusion of the conference. Kathleen
Rosetti (formerly of the Yale Center for International and Area
Studies) prepared our information brochure for the conference and
worked tirelessly through numerous revisions. Many thanks are also
due to James Eves, who designed the conference poster and the
Sangha River Conference website and who continues to work with
us on our Sangha River Network website development.
During the conference itself, an energetic team of graduate students
from the Africa Natural Resources Group (ANRG) at the School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies helped to coordinate the logistical
complexities of hosting such a large number of international participants. David Bowes-Lyon, Drue DeBerry, Ben Gardner, Eva Garen,
Ammy Gillesberg, Elise Granek, Ngeta Kabiri, Jessica Lawrence, Kate
McManus, Mila Plavsic, Jamie Shambaugh, Anne St. John, and Karen
Steer provided consistent and cheerful support. Without the dedicated
expertise and diligence of Forestry and Environmental Studies students
John McKenna and Andrea McQuay, we would not have secured the
critically important videotape record of all the conference sessions.
These videotapes proved invaluable in preparation of the discussion
sections and presentations appearing in this volume.
Our team of translators, most from the French Department, has
been coordinated by Andre Siamundele, who has also coordinated
both translation and network development since May 1998. Edward
Tilson, Charles Mironko, and Cora Monroe applied their language
skills from the study of literature and anthropology to more environmental issues through this work. They accomplished both simultaneous
French-English interpretation during the conference sessions, and, with
the invaluable assistance and editorial work of Philippe Auzel,
Katherine Collin, Monique Froment, and Valerie Wolrich, translation
and formatting of texts for this volume.
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We were fortunate to find, in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Bulletin Series, a forum for our proceedings that
matched our need for accessibility of information as well as for academic standards concerning ongoing research. The bilingual nature of
our project was a first for the Bulletin Series, which has published
monographs, conference proceedings, and other environmental work
of interest by Yale faculty and students since 1912. Bulletin Series Coeditors Assistant Dean Jane Coppock and Librarian Joseph Miller of the
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies oversaw the editing of
the papers in this volume, working with us to bring these texts of various styles, lengths, and topics into a coherent whole. As the publication
neared completion, we were all deeply saddened by the death of Joe
Miller after a long illness. We are greatly honored by the editorial effort
he exerted on our project during his last months of life.
A small team of production staff entered the conference papers into
a desktop publishing program. Radhika Wittunge, Mila Plavsic,
Monique Froment and Tiara Valentino-Perkins have “been there” for
us, getting the most minute of changes made, and the most enormous
of drafts produced. Russell Shaddox of Yale’s Reprographic and Imaging Services, and Peggy Sullivan and Dottie Scott, graphic designers,
have also been invaluable sources of expertise and production finesse in
the final formatting stages. For sustained, visionary commitment to
excellence in a final product, Series Editor Jane Coppock deserves a
particular expression of our recognition and respect.
The Sangha River Project has moved through the conference and
this publication into a network of scholars and practitioners who
continue collaboration toward a deeper understanding of the development and environment needs of the Sangha River watershed. At
the same time, the Sangha River Network (or SRN) has been part of
the changing practice of environmental studies and regional or area
studies within academic institutions. At Yale University, the SRN
has joined the “Rethinking Environment and Development” group
of a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative, with the goal of stimulating intensive, regional and cross-regional studies that involve a wide
array of academic and professional specialists. Through that initiative, Assistant Professor Arun Agrawal at Yale and Kalyankrishnan
Sivaramakrishnan, Fellow of the Institute for Development Studies,
University of Sussex have become cherished collaborators. They
have helping us connect our project, both institutionally and intellectually, to broader comparative work on environmental, political
and economic issues.
At the University of Orléans, France, SRN has joined the ERMESIRD laboratory’s forest studies program in order to include Frenchspeaking scholars, particularly Africans, in emerging institutional
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networks for exchange of research results and resources for further
study. Georges Dupré, Alain Froment and Jean Paul Lescure have participated wholeheartedly in, and thus shaped, this experiment.
A few more thanks are in order for those mentors who have shaped
our long-term vision of the project. Professor Tim Clark of the Yale
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies provided us with essential guidance through the development of long and short-term planning of our collective and individual futures. We would also like to
extend our deep appreciation to William Ascher of Duke University,
who brought divergent conference participant views together in extremely valuable ways for future work. David Apter, Chair of Yale’s
Council on African Studies, has included us in discussions with his
colleagues, David Cameron, Chair of the Political Science Department
at Yale, and Dunstan Wai, Director of the World Bank’s Capacity
Building Program. Such conversations have sharpened our visions of
future possibilities, and we thank Dr. Apter for facilitating such contacts.
The Yale Center for International and Area Studies continues to
offer us immense support, through the guidance of Director Gustav
Ranis and the hard work of staff members Beverly Kimbro and Haynie
Wheeler, who advise us on financial matters and on further funding
development. The Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University, in
the person of Program Coordinator Kay Mansfield, has generously
offered us office space in its building, enabling us to centralize and
coordinate our operations.
Somehow families and friends always seem to be relegated to the
last paragraph of acknowledgments. Their position at the end of our
long list reflects the fundamental nature of their roles; the Eves, Hardin,
and Rupp families gave us support in ways that only families can. We
would particularly like to thank Julie Hardin for her organizational
skills and support during the conference. Richard Ruggiero, Philippe
Auzel, and Ju-Hon Kwek have made contributions, through their acceptance, affection and encouragement, for which no words can confer
adequate thanks.
Heather E. Eves, Rebecca Hardin, and Stephanie Rupp
November 1998
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  
Preface
Alison Richard
Provost, Yale University
What follows are welcoming remarks made at the opening of the international conference ”Natural Resource Use
Relations in the Trinational Sangha River Region of the Northwest Congo Basin,” on which this volume is based, held at
Yale University in September of 1997. As a postscript to the remarks which follow, I would like to say how delighted I
have been to see the work of the conference continue to blossom into the first bilingual issue of the excellent Bulletin
Series of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and into the Sangha River Network, a professional
research network which manages information across different institutions, nations, and intellectual traditions for conservation in the Sangha River Region.
Some of you participants in the Sangha River conference come from
far; others of you come from within the Yale community. It is fitting
and necessary that this conference bring a truly international focus
on an important part of the globe. I salute the initiative that brings
you all together, and believe it embodies two great strengths of Yale.
First, we at Yale, and at universities like Yale, are sometimes
viewed as living in an ivory tower. But I submit to you that many of
us have one foot outside of that tower most of the time. The gathering here for the Sangha River conference includes scholars and
actors who will sit down at a table to talk together, break bread
together, and exchange views in ways that are both formal and informal. The efforts of Heather Eves, Rebecca Hardin, and Stephanie
Rupp to organize this conference exemplify the delicate but crucial
balance between analysis and activism that universities exhibit at
their best.
Second, your gathering demonstrates a wonderful “connectedness” across disciplines. To use Yale as an example again, in this
room today are gathered students and faculty from many departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as from the Yale
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. This conference is an
enterprise that brings political scientists, as well as economists,
historians, anthropologists and legal scholars, into the arena. Collaborative relationships across the separate traditional academic
disciplines are cherished and nurtured at Yale, and taken full advantage of by our students.
This is as it should be, for the challenges and problems that we
confront globally today are rarely susceptible to solutions that find
their homes entirely within the traditional academic disciplines.
Certainly these disciplines contribute to finding new insights. But
new systems of knowledge are emerging; we must combine our
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systems of knowledge with those that originate in other parts of the
world to find solutions to some of the difficulties we face, especially
concerning the environment.
Those ways forward, those outcomes, arise in meetings such as
this, when scholars and actors from different traditions, different
epistemological groundings, come together and talk things out. Such
discussions are not always amicable. This room is filled with passionately interested and engaged people and I do not anticipate that
the next few days will be easy. In fact, I’d suggest that you wouldn’t
be reaching your potential if they are easy.
I urge you to sit down with honesty and shared enterprise as
your common cause. I wish you the best in this undertaking. Yale
welcomes you, and thanks you for being here.
ALISON RICHARD is Provost and Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment at Yale University. She
joined the Yale faculty in 1972, and served as Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History from 1991 to
1994. Dr. Richard trained in anthropology and primate biology at Cambridge and London Universities. Her research
focuses on the ecology and social behavior of the living primates, and on what these close relatives of humans reveal
about the evolution of human society. She has studied primates in Central America, tropical Africa, and the Himalayan
foothills, but is most widely known for her work of more than twenty years on the lemurs of Madagascar. In addition to
her work as a researcher and university administrator, Dr. Richard has also played an active role in efforts to conserve
the remaining forests and wildlife of southwest Madagascar, and in helping to train Malagasy students as resource
managers and conservation biologists.
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