(Source: Adapted from Management Plan, 2002)
Expert interviews with elders reveal that an individual cannot lease, rent or sell land because it is communally owned. The entire forest is apportioned to the different lineages that make up the clan. Within each lineage, landed property is bequeathed by parcelling it among male children. Discussions in Esukutan reveal that land ownership is largely dependent on marital status. Customarily, women are not allowed to own land, but could work on their husbands’ lands. On the other hand, males of any age are allocated farm plots once they have a wife and are living on their own. Landed property bequeath is synonymous to capital bequeath because as one Esukutan elder noted, “land is the biggest
capital to give a son”. Inheritance is in itself an insurance policy; it does not only guarantee the continuous survival of the farm but also ensures that future heirs would earn a livelihood. Also, the sons or brothers of the family head as well as from his mother’s family can inherit land. Land ownership influences the decision of a family to accept the marriage proposal of a man to their daughter. In principle, women could open cocoa farms in the village forestland. Informants could not remember the last time any woman ever asked for a farm plot in Esukutan. Household interviews revealed that women who reported incomes from cash crops were widows who worked on their late husbands’ lands. In all, land entitlements discriminate against women, which stand in between explanations why women do not own cash crops farms in either of the communities. Elders parcel land to their sons early enough because it serves as a contract under their social security system whereby children take care of their parents when the latter grow old and frail. Women may not own land but they are under obligation to care for their parents too. Every holder of land has a lifelong right; as a custodian of the land for future generations as the customs demand them not to be proprietors. So, land rights are generally controlled by the customs and the chief in consultation with the village council regulates land use by any stranger.
‘Stranger’ household in Esukutan provided 6 bottles of afofo, one goat and food to the authorities who finally granted them a piece of land to cultivate. They do not have the right to sell or lease that land but could carry out all forest linked livelihood activities.
Hunting with firearms in daylight or at night does not respect boundaries but a part of the virgin forest is for hunting. For Esukutan, the area of forest beyond a 10 km limit from the settlement is where large scale hunting and collection of NTFPs takes place (this area is coloured green on Map 5). It is access-free only to village members. This open access does not guarantee exhaustibility because Ekpwe laws are binding for extraction in the entire village forest. However, people from other communities are free to hunt in such an open access territory but not without formal permission from the village council to conduct more than a casual hunting or gathering expedition. Village leaders and community members do acknowledge that such acts took place up to the 80s but they no longer do it.
3.5.2 Land clearance: an authenticator of ownership rights
Land clearance is an important customary activity because it authenticates ownership rights. A piece of farmland is appropriated by clearance. Men go for a land survey by wandering around the thick forest cutting trails that would become tracts. They look for a place that has not got too many rocks, tight tree cover, and is not hilly. The reason is that rocks are not good for the roots of the crops; and that roots of trees as well as their shades did not provide good conditions for plant growth. Farming on the hillside needs much investment in time and energies to employ soil conservation techniques (Chapter 5). There are labour intensive since practices are manual and not mechanised. Farms are located some 500 meters away from big streams and rivers because they usually overflow their banks during periods of heavy rainfall. So, to avoid crops damage by floods villagers farm far away from streams and rivers. Also, informants disclose that encroachments are a potential source of conflict and so people generally farm close to the boundaries with neighbours. This guarantees automatic encroachments checks and reduces conflicts.
Table 5: Farm sizes as disclosed by households in both communities
Category Number of households in each category
Ikondo Kondo I Esukutan
Small (0.5-1.5 acres) 17 16
Medium (2-3.5 acres) 18 18
Large (4.0- above acres) 6 6
Generally farm sizes are small. For instance, the highest cocoa producer in Esukutan does not own more than three hectares of forest while the smallest cocoa producer in Ikondo Kondo I cleared only about one hectare of forest. The declared farmland holdings in 2006 are grouped in three categories of small, medium and large farmland cultivators as in Table 5. In 2006, Ikondo Kondo I households cleared a total of 96 hectares of forest, 15 hectares less than the official declaration after the relocation in 2000 (Korup Project, 1999:24).
Esukutan households cleared a total of 85 hectares of farmland with an average of 1.98 hectares per household. In 1923, the average was between one acre (4046, 24 m2; slightly less than a hectare), and one acre and a half (6069, 36 m2; slightly above one hectare) per family (Carr, 1923:25). Our findings show that small farmland cultivator households in the communities are mainly young couples or unmarried women.
Quantitative data show that farm size is correlated to the gender of the household heads.
Hence, in both communities, females head half of the smallholder households. Also, female-headed households cleared a maximum of 2 hectares. A cash incentive of 23000 FRS CFA was paid to relocated household that cleared up to 1 hectare motivated locals to clear bigger portions of land. In 2006, many households did no longer cultivate the entire volume of land that was cleared in 2000. It was also observed that female headed households in Ikondo Kondo I, clear land that is big enough for farming food crops.
Chapter 4: Household livelihoods activities and diversification
4. Introduction
This chapter is a thick description of households’ livelihood activities because they are the epi-centre of the discourse on human settlements in the national park. The idea is to expose the meanings behind these activities and their symbolic import (context). Also, in a conservation hotspot, human livelihood activities could justify the claims of either the romantics or the utilitarians (Chapter 2). In this case study, conservation is mistaken for protection. There are many definitions of the concepts of “conservation” and “protection”.
The most convincing and recent distinction is made by Pearce et al., (2005:283) who argue that conservation instead of production describes the proper management of the forest for the sustained yield of forest products or services or their combination. To them, protection conjures up the image of leaving a forest totally alone when in practice some management of fire and invasive exotic species is still likely to be required to conserve forest structure and composition. Contemporary conservation entails sustainable resources extraction, use and management to ensure sustained yields of forest resources. Studies between 1923 and 2000 describe Korup forest people’s livelihood activities as small in scale and with little potential to damage the forest; trees are not cut, the grass is cleared and burnt to make conditions better for regeneration and palm trees are planted around the village (Carr, 1923;
Infield, 1988; Malleson, 2000). None of them expose how the social actors interpret their interactions with forest resources. In filling this gap, this chapter addresses the following questions: what are the livelihoods activities of the people? How are these seasonal activities carried out? How do locals interpret the impact of their activities on the forest?
4.1 Rural livelihoods: theoretical framework
In answering these questions, the analyses in this chapter focus on the aspect of Frank Ellis, (2000:10) “rural livelihoods framework” which is “activities”. This is because the aim is not to explore the livelihood outcomes of the people but to understand how the processes occur and how locals interpret them. Both social and biological sciences documentations are explored since it is advised that livelihoods and diversity should be approached in an
Scholars have extensively and convincingly discussed rural livelihood activities (Ellis, 2000; Ellis and Freeman, 2005). These typical natural and non-natural resources based activities include; collection, cultivation of food and non-food crops, livestock, rural trade, rural manufacture, remittances, other services and transfers (Ellis, 2000:30). In the communities, ‘rural manufacture and remittances’ are insignificant. There are no blacksmiths, migrant household members are mostly school children and so money would go from the village to the city and not the other way round. Also, households do not mention an instance when their married daughters gave gifts of money to them; neither do households feel comfortable with the researcher’s idea to state in monetary terms all the meaningful exchanges they make. More to this, the two households, which acknowledge such transfers, do not see the need to characterize bush meat in monetary terms. Hence, for this chapter, rural manufacture, remittances and other transfers are not discussed.
Some livelihood activities are gendered and households engage in more than one activity because of ‘choice and necessity’ caused by the rainy and dry seasons (Ellis, 2000:55). As the seasons change, households or individuals shift more to or from one activity to the other and hence, participate in a diverse portfolio of activities (Ibid:4). For instance, in the heart of the rainy season, nearly everyone goes to sleep in the forest to collect bush mango and harvest eru. During this period, hunting with guns is banned because of possible accidents. In an evening story-telling time, the chief of Esukutan village narrated how he almost killed himself in a hunting spree for porcupines in mid July when the rains were very heavy and places were slippery. He came across a slippery slope and fell down. A hanging branch hooked the trigger of his loaded gun and pulled it and the bullets came out.
When he got up, gazed around and listened to hear if the stray bullets killed anyone. He immediately went home and recounted the story to family members and other villagers who also gave accounts of past experiences. Since then, people fear hunting during the rainy season when bush mango collection is at its peak. However, some hunters reported that during such periods, they hunt far away from farming areas of the forest.
Examples of activity shifts due to changing seasons are presented in two separate seasonal calendars, which picture what the people are doing during the different seasons. Locals spend much of their time in the “bush houses” or huts during the peak season for NTFPs collection (Malleson et al., 2008:8). Conversational interviews and field observations reveal that occupational shift from one activity to another reflects prevailing weather conditions. Tables 1 and 2 are typical seasonal calendar for men and women in Esukutan.
Ikondo Kondo I villagers did not accept a request for constructing a seasonal calendar, besides they are no longer located or legally extract inside the national park. Seasonal calendars differ only slightly. While men start their farming year in October by clearing virgin forest (black bush), women start theirs in January by weeding previous farm plots.
This observation seems to be true if one takes farm preparation as the beginning of the traditional year. If the departure point is based on the idea that such remote communities had once been hunter-gatherer societies, then it is hard to state which activity opens the year for them. However, the farming calendar gives an idea of what men and women consider to constitute and represent their year (Table 6&7).
Table 6: Seasonal Calendar: “Typical” Esukutan male
October – November Land clearance and felling of smaller trees to plant cocoa, bananas, plantain suckers and cocoyam. Hunting with guns, traps, fishing with nets and hooks January – February Burning and wrecking slashed material, cutting Leanne to provide sun light
necessary for plant growth. Intensive fishing with hooks, nets and baskets.
February - March Clearing and weeding of grasslands to plant cassava, maize, egusi, groundnuts, yams, beans, cocoa and plantains. Pruning cocoa trees and weeding of grass for the last harvests of food crops other than cassava.
April Work on cocoa farm; spraying of cocoa trees with gammalin to kill fungi and other pests, a chemical called co-seed is also used. Hunting and fishing.
May – July Continuous spraying of cocoa trees since cocoa pods grow bigger.
Chemicals do expire three weeks or one month after usages. Failure to do so will cause too much black pods. Harvesting starts in June and ends in August. Other species could be harvested until December. Limited hunting.
June- August Picking of bush mango and processing. No hunting with guns but traps September Rounding up NTFPs collection, drying the cocoa beans as well as preparing
children for school. Fishing with hooks.
Markets and resource abundance cause activity shift or participation in multiple activities.
Conversational interviews with households’ resource persons in both communities reveal that the past five years have witnessed low NTFP yields, and cash crops are once-in-a-year income earners. So, men and youths are now heavily engaged in the collection of bush mango and njangsanga that were formerly collected by women. Former full time hunters and fishers are increasingly shifting to open food and cash crops farms; otherwise less strenuous activities with an assured annual income. Most people explain that hunting is strenuous and less successful because animals are reducing in the forest. However, hunting with firearms is banned in September when the market for extracted wild seeds is good, so men collect wild seeds for the most part of the month. So, in a typical household, members engage in many different activities and or may pool their incomes.
Gender segmentation is observed in activities like hunting and virgin forest clearance;
entirely carried out by men (Chapter 3). It is tempting to generalize like Fiona Flintan, (2003:3) that woman are main collectors of NTFPs but Table 1 shows that men also engage in bush mango collection especially during the peak season. These seasonal calendars do not include festivals, ceremonies and other cultural displays because the intension was to capture those activities that have a direct interaction with forest resources. Informants did not mention important meetings, groupings and emergency situations that happen to discuss forest related issues. But, some were observed and noted by the research team.
Table 7: Seasonal Calendar: “Typical” Esukutan female
Conversational interviews with village elders reveal that people do not specialize in any activity because there are a lot of uncertainties in their livelihood activities. The issue for them is to allocate their time according to the changing seasons. So, a fisher can farm, a hunter can trap. Hunters, fishers and so on do farming. Also, women help to clear cocoa farms, collect the harvested pods as well as in the processing of the beans.
Table 8: Segmental engagements in livelihoods activities
Livelihoods Activity Boys < 15 Girls < 15 Men Women
Farming
Food crops
Gari processing, slash and slash material burning
Soil tillage, seeding, drinking water
Locate and clear plot, plant suckers, nurse seedlings, prune, spray, harvest and process beans
Weed, mulch, harvest, gari processing, gather cocoa pods, removing and porting beans for sale or home Cash crops
Collect harvested pods, help in land clearance
Collect pods and port processed beans
NTFPs Extraction
Animals Set traps - Guns and traps Check traps
Plants
Collect bush mango, some harvest eru, all collect firewood
Harvest eru, njangsanga, ngongo leaves and bush mango
Bush mangoes others
occasionally
Collect all sorts of wild fruits, seeds and harvest leaves
Fishing Hooks Baskets Poisons, nets Baskets
Petty Trade - Alcohol, cigarettes, kerosene, magi
Porting and guiding Sales items; cocoa beans, bush meat, processed wild seeds, and cargo
But a high degree of specialisation and social differentiation exists in hunting and trapping which men exclusively do. However, not all males in a household carryout hunting as well as not all households that have males do engage in animal hunting. All households do Farming and fishing but the latter is not as intensive to qualify as a main occupation.
Fishing is also seasonal. Petty trade is an activity that could start with the sale of one packet January Virgin forest slashing by men, women weed cultivated plots to harvest crops;
select seeds for next planting; fishing with baskets (tadpoles, crabs, tilapia).
January – February Second phase of weeding of cocoyam, cassava, yams, plantains and bananas farm plots. Also harvest for home consumption. Some fishing with baskets.
March Planting of cocoyam, cassava, yams, plantains, banana, maize and beans.
Harvesting cassava for gari production and sale.
February- March Harvesting of cocoyam, cassava is harvest throughout the year. Soil tillage and planting of new seeds. Some fishing with baskets.
April- May First phase of weeding grass and mulching; some fishing with baskets
June-December Collection of NTFPs (wild seeds) and processing for sale to buy school and Christmas needs for children and the family.
of cigarettes to about five packets a week. Most of these activities have been studied and described as “typical” for rural communities (Ellis, 2000:16).
Wild fires is undesirable because it is labour intensive and so only small heaps of dried matter is made at a reasonable distance in the cleared space to create fire breaks. Dried logs around are lit and in some cases they retain fire to complete the process. Women and children do the second stage of burning since it involves thorough wrecking of the half burnt matter. Locals reveal that burning releases nutrients in the form of ash which if washed by rain leaches into the soil as natural fertilizers. They also explain that burning helps to reduce soil compaction, increases water percolation and aeration and this is good for plant roots. Our Ikondo Kondo I host disclosed another importance of burning. Holding black soil in her hand, she explained that burning increases its water retention capacity and is good for plant nutrition. These explanations capture the soil science concept of bulk density; the resultant of the weight of the unit volume of a soil and its pore spaces. The pore spaces regulate the water and aeration status of soils, plant root penetration and development. Burning stops with the heavy rains by the end of March and tilling starts.
4.3.1.1 Food crops farming
Additional food crops farming practices include: tilling, seed varieties’ selection, planting, weeding, harvesting, storage and use. These inherited practices from past generations have undergone minor changes and households continue to farm on the lineage forest plots.
Land tillage is done with metal hoes produced by blacksmiths. Seeds are sown immediately after tillage. Locals are aware that their soils are strongly compacted and so they till in order loosen them and make the soils suitable for plant growth. Some are aware that tilling can open the soil to agents of soil erosion like wind and running water. Tilling is haphazard and in a slovenly manner. Conversational group interviews with elderly villagers reveal that the main food crops grown in both villages are not different from those indicated in a 1923 report (Carr, 1923). They grow plantains, bananas, cocoyams, beans, maize, caso, essaka, masua and pepper and in smaller quantities of yams, mbu, sugar cane, cassava and okra (some are dialect names). The villagers grow fruits like coconuts, mangoes, plums, pears, pawpaw, guava, lemon and oranges on their farms.
Mixed or inter-cropping; a common farming practice is confirmed by households and was observed on farms around settlements. For instance, beans, maize and coco yams are