Household incomes and the differentiated livelihood situation

Kondo I, respectively. Generally, male-headed households and Esukutan households are diversified strategies households. The larger chunk of their incomes comes from farming and petty trade while wild forest resources provide additional incomes.

Specialized-strategy households are those with higher incomes like the primary school teacher of Ikondo Kondo I who is a government employee. His wife does not report any sales of collected wild forest resources. Two hunters in Ikondo Kondo I that had assisted researchers from Britain and the United States of America did earn the bigger part of their 2006 incomes within 6 months. If they had continued working and earning that much they would qualify as specialized strategies households. An Esukutan female-headed household falls in this category as it makes about 97% of its total household income from petty trade.

Although the above distinction makes academic sense, it also has some practical realities.

Mainstream conservationists blame subsistence strategy households for heavily degrading the forest for the market. But specialized strategies households indirectly force these households to deplete the forest. Rich households usually buy bush meat from hunters. Five household heads in Ikondo Kondo I and two in Esukutan were observed providing bullets to hunters who in return gave them hunted game. One of these hunters is a former village council chairperson who requested an advanced pay from our research team so that he could buy bullets. So, consumers and extractors have to be blamed for any mal behaviours.

a material bases (wealth) and not income (short term) for riches. But the quantitative data reveal that a male-headed household is the richest. 29% of households rank the female headed household as the richest because it; has many children attending secondary school;

owns a zinc roofed house and a large farm. 26% rank the indigenous chief as the richest citing his ownership of a large cocoa farm, zinc roofed house and educating two children in secondary school. Three households rank HH7 as the richest for the same reasons plus that he owns a TV set and a generator. Five households rank HH9 as the richest because of all these reasons plus the fact that he owns plastic chairs. Three others (HH1, HH23, and HH24) are ranked richest by one household each for their great hunting skills and sponsorship of children from sales of bush meat. So, wealthiest households in Esukutan;

invests in the education of children (rankers saw as a secured path to riches); has skill and ownership of landed property like a zinc roofed house or an imported set of plastic chairs.

For Ikondo Kondo I ownership of a house does not mean riches probably because everybody owns a free house donated at the time of relocation in 2000. 23 households rank HH36 as the richest. This retired tailor ranks highest because unlike others, he planted all the palm, banana, plantain and biter cola seedlings that Korup Project freely donated. It is the only household that supply palm oil to the village. It also produces and sells garri. One household each to be the richest because they are “hardworking and own large cassava, bananas, and plantain farms” ranks HH4, HH8, HH38 and HH43. HH21 ranks richest by three households because he rears animals, ports for researchers, owns large cocoa and palm farm and sells afofo in the village. The government chief of Ikondo Kondo I, who resides permanently in Mundemba, is ranked by four other households as the richest because he logs around the village and earns a monthly salary as a game guard. One household ranks HH6 the richest because he has not stopped hunting after 4 arrests by game guards and has great hunting skills. In all, wealth ranking in Ikondo Kondo I only reflects investments on farms and on children’s education. Hunting skills are also seen as wealth as hunters are sure of killing an animal every hunting expedition.

In discussing the economic prospects for their households, locals often say out-of-wild forest resources investments have the best prospects for riches. The general trend in

Esukutan is assets based. Those living in thatched houses said they want to increase cocoa production so as to earn more money, build a zinc-roofed house and educate their children.

Households that own a zinc-roofed house declared their intentions to increase both cash and food crops production so as to earn more money to buy plastic chairs, educate children in secondary and high school and to live a ‘better’ life. Ikondo Kondo I households were not asked this question, which is considered too sensitive for the people who now ‘feel abandoned after relocation’.

Although locals would invest more on off-wild income activities, their reliance on NTFPs will continue due to on the multiple functions including: the safety (emergency and daily) nets, and gap filling. NTFPs are very vital for the livelihoods of Korup forest people as a guarantee of livelihoods security. This security or safety net function is observable in the daily lives of households. Households use them on a daily basis as food, medicine or for wading witchcraft (see alligator pepper). As observed in the communities, every household ate more than one type of NTFP a day. “Don’t you see what is in my pot”, “we would die without NTFPs”are some of the recurrent responses when households are asked when they last used an NTFP. For some, just eating foods with wild forest plants ensure good health.

“I am almost 40 but I have never been hospitalized for malaria, typhoid fever and other illnesses because of my continuous eating of wild medicinal plants. Without these wild plants that are harvested for free in the park, many people in my village would have died⁴⁵”. NTFPs are reported to play an emergency safety net function; either when households use them directly as medicine when a member falls sick or when processed wild forest products are sold during times of emergency. Hunting of animals to sell and pay hospital bills was noted. The emphasis is on the timing of the action (when facing a shock).

There are no hospitals in the communities, and so in times of sickness, the first aid or remedy is often herbs, seeds or barks of wild plants (Chapter 3). Many households can be observed stockpiling bags of njangsanga and or bush mango that could be sold and the money used to handle an emergency.

45The government chief of Ikondo Kondo I explained in an interview in Mundemba Town, July 2006

Esukutan women keep bags of njangsanga on barns in order to sell them in times of crisis.

They have no regular income but according to them problems are regular and so to prepare for the rainy days, household do not sell all the collected NTFPs at once. The bags of njangsanga are reserved so that if a household member falls sick and could not be treated by using folk medicine, they would immediately sell the njangsanga and use the money to rush the patient to the hospital. They are aware of their resilience and shock readiness capacities and so those who “cannot prepare for bad days by stocking collected saleable forest products then your entire household will perish if your emergency requires serious medical attention”⁴⁶. A story is narrated of a man who died due to lack of money to go to the hospital. He had sold all what he collected in the previous years and spent the money not knowing that NTFPs yields would reduce drastically the coming year. This emergency safety net function also reveals how households adopt the ‘fastening of the belt’ approach in anticipation of a readiness to face a possible shock in the near future.

Another example of this safety net function of NTFPs is that of the indigenous chief of Ikondo Kondo I whom we visited on his sick bed and he was going to sell the bush mango seeds on his barn so that he could receive medical attention at the Mundemba health center.

In Esukutan, a former village council chairman asked for an advance pay so that he could purchase bullets to be used latter for hunting inside the national park. On November 03, 2006 when our research team arrived at the road terminus in Bakut, he opted to port the three heavy bags alone. His reason is that he needed money to foot the bills of his sick wife at a healer’s compound in Nigeria. He insisted to be paid before doing the job so that he can buy bullets for hunting. This idea does not to fit into the theory that environmental services like porting provide alternative income and reduce dependence on wild resources.

Households also mention how animal and plant NTFPs play gap filling and cost saving functions. Farming and petty trade providing the bulk while NTFPs provide additional income to fill the gap between what is realised and what is spent. Households rely on medicinal herbs for treatment than spending money to get healthcare from the nearest

46Translated interview with Ana Obini, Esukutan Village, November 2006.

health post. NTFPs are used as food on a daily basis, which is integral to direct household provisioning. The limited access to cash incomes in both communities makes the direct cost saving function of wild forest products an important livelihood security aspect.

Conversational interviews reveal that the collection and use of NTFPs help to meet daily household needs for food, house construction, medicine and investments in the education of children; buying farm inputs like cutlasses, hoes, and pesticides. They also provide capital for petty traders. All petty trading households revealed that their source of capital was from sale of NTFPs, especially bush mango, njangsanga and bush meat.

A revealing cost saving example is repeated in almost all the thatched houses in Esukutan village. They compare the price of a bundle of zinc sheets as a measure of how much money their household has been saving by merely using freely harvested thatches from the forest to roof their houses. This confirms the idea that cost saving are better reflected by replacement values of the goods that the NTFPs substitute, rather than direct-use value based on farm-gate prices (Shackleton and Shackleton, 2004:660). Owners of zinc roofed houses also declare cost savings by roofing their kitchens with thatches. So, the relative magnitude of this cost saving example is glaring for owners of thatched houses (who consider themselves poorer households) than for owners of zinc roofed houses (who are viewed as wealthier by poorer households). If Korup forest peoples have to pay for extracted NTFPs, then the cost would be “too high for them to bear”⁴⁷. These functions shows that local dependence NTFPs is engrained in the coping strategies of the people for centuries now which make abandoning it a difficult choice.

Qualitative interviews reveal that markets than drive extraction by home consumption.

Households’ resource persons estimate that more of the extracted resources is sold than is consumed by households. Yet many live on a daily subsistence basis and could rarely provide a ‘sustainable’ livelihood or a way out of poverty. 29 households in Esukutan and 24 in Ikondo Kondo I whose primary source of income and main livelihood option is NTFPs continue to be poor, have limited assets (no plastic chairs, no zinc roofed house) and unable to meet their aspirations (educate children beyond primary school).

47Ikondo Kondo I government chief: Mundemba, June, 2006