Impact monitoring of Forest Management in Cameroon

The impact monitoring of the Sector Program of Forest and Environment (PSFE) aims to determine the progress made by the PSFE in four different inter-linked areas : forest management, evolution of natural resources, governance and poverty dynamics . Decision makers and the interested public can use the tools to inform themselves on the status and change of each indicator. This should feed into eventual adjustments of policies and activities according to the objectives of the PSFE.

After determining 33 indicators and their correspondent variables, a database management system was developed during the first program phase. This system allows, among other functionalities, for automatic calculation of each indicator as soon as data and updates are available. A first 'state of the indicators' was published in October 2006 for important forest areas within Cameroon: the South-East and the South-West. During 2008, the system was upgraded to a network server with a web interface, first presented on December 11th at the PROMOTE Fair in Yaoundé.

Today the monitoring database is available online allowing decision makers and the public to evaluate the state of each indicator based on the latest available data. On a technical level, the monitoring system is now based on a PostgreSQL database with the option of decentralized data entry. In addition to the database, an online atlas provides interactive maps on forestry and socioeconomics using Mapserver technology.

The availability of data time series should allow users to capture dynamics of different variables and to put indicators into context.

The 33 indicators of the impact monitoring were chosen based on the objectives of PSFE. They are structured in three categories:

• Evolution of natural resources
• Good governance and reinforcement of capacities
• Reduction of poverty

The indicators are based on a large number of biophysical and socio-economic variables. Wherever possible, the data was taken from already existing sources. Only when no data was available, additional polls and (spatial) data analyses where used to gather the required information.

Since much of the data is based on spatial items, or have at least a spatial relation, the same data used for the calculation of the indicators are displayed in an online atlas, allowing the public to get a better understanding of the geographic distributions of certain variables and their correlation with the forest.