Ebo Forest in Big Trouble Again!

Ebo Forest is a 2,000 km² proposed national park in the Littoral Region of Cameroon. It is home to an amazingly rich diversity of plants and animals, including gorilla Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, forest elephants, drills, and Preuss’s red colobus, which are either endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. The proposed protected area is one of Cameroon’s largest intact rainforests, containing an estimated 35 million tonnes of carbon.

There is apparently an ardent strive to destroy this carbon sink and the biodiversity therein. According to a letter addressed to the Delegation of the EU to Cameroon, British High Commission, German, French, and U.S. Embassy, on July 22, 2022, by eight Cameroon-based conservation organizations, Ebo Forest is about to be depleted by a road construction project.

The letter picks holes on the road construction project including but not limited to the fact that the road building goes against the Prime Minister’s Decree from 6 August 2020, does not provide inclusive development, and is likely illegal. The conservation organizations use the letter to request that the ambassadors and high commissioner act immediately and publicly commit to discuss concerns about Ebo forest with Cameroon and demand an independent investigation of the legality of the road construction operation and the logging in FMU 07 002.

They equally called on the diplomats to publicly commit funds and work with rights holders and other stakeholders to develop inclusive projects for alternative road building and other projects for sustainable development for Ebo forest communities, and to make sure extractive activities that prejudice the outcome of this participatory process are halted. This commitment, according to the conservation actors, “could trigger authorities to suspend and rethink the Ebo road project.”

The protest letter is coming barely about 2 years after petitions and widespread online condemnation culminated in the revoking of a Prime Ministerial Decree that was going to see the logging of some 68,385 hectares of the Ebo Forest.

The project to transform the Ebo Forest into a national park, announced in 2006 by the Cameroon Government, seems to have been put to sleep, giving centre stage to projects that rather deplete the biodiversity hotspot. The Cameroon Government is a signatory to many international conventions dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to protect species and their habitats. One of the most recent agreements was signed, July 20, 2020, by President Paul Biya on the conservation of gorillas and their habitats. Halting projects that deplete a biodiversity hotspot and carbon sink like the Ebo forest will be a great way for the Cameroon Government to show good faith toward these international commitments.

By Ndimuh B. Shancho