Louis Defo 299Harvesters belong to the Ewondo and related groups (subset of the great
Bantu family), which is said to have arrived in the forest zone in the nineteenth
century from Adamawa (Mveng 1963, 1985)^3. The populations are distributed
in a myriad of diverse size hamlets and constitute segmental societies
(communities without strong sociopolitical leadership). This characteristic has
far-reaching implications on natural resource exploitation and at the level of
the ‘anthropic’^4 ascendancy over space. The region has 10 to 40 inhabitants
per square kilometre (Santoir 1992), and the low rural densities contribute to
the perpetuation of this situation and have remarkable repercussions on the
main economic activity of the region—agriculture (loose land tenure system,
bush fallowing). Villagers within the scope of this study mainly practice food
producing or crop agriculture (slash and burn shifting cultivation system) and
cocoa cultivation (coffee cultivation there is marginal). They equally engage
themselves in multiple extra-agricultural activities such as craftsmanship,
exploitation of sand, fishing, hunting and the collection or harvest of other
NTFPs (Irvingia, Gnetum, Marantaceae, Cola). The social groups are quite
integrated in the market economy, essentially by cocoa farming and the sale
of foodstuff products.
The harvesting of rattan constitutes an important element of the village
production system as indicated notably by the share of households involved
(35%) and the monetary income obtained (approximately 42% of global income
of household concerned; US$276 of average annual income per household
involved against for example US$174 for cocoa, US$1,556.5 for small scale
wood sawing and US$202 for foodstuff cultivation for example; annual average
monetary income of households involved in the exploitation of rattan amounts
to US$822.3 against US$654.5 for those who are not involved and US$704.9 for
all categories of household). Figures 3, 4 and 5 show from where households in
the seven villages derived income in various contexts. Taking all the indicators
into account, rattan exploitation constitutes the second most important activity
after agriculture. The money from rattan is important not only in absolute
and relative value terms, but also and especially because of its rapid or
immediate and relatively regular nature, which makes it a great means to
face current cash flow problems.
This and many other characteristics allow the exploitation of rattan to
integrate harmoniously in the multiple activities villagers undertake to survive.
Monetary income stemming from rattan often contributes to the development
of other activities. Rattan exploitation and other economic activities usually
alternate in the timetable of villagers. This combination unfortunately does not
allow rattan harvesters to have an acceptable standard of living, even if compared
to others farmers some rattan harvesters and artisans enjoy a somewhat higher
income. Just like the other farmers they live in poorly constructed houses, have
difficult access to medical care and have no access to conveniences such as
electricity and pure drinking water. They have therefore been evolving in a
context of abject poverty (in the context of the whole country and according to
the World Bank and IFM indicators) (Banque Mondiale 1995) for more than a
decade by way of a severe economic recession and a systematic resignation of
the state in the face of some of its fundamental social missions. Actors of the
processing sector equally operate in this context of poverty.17Rattan.P65 299 22/12/2004, 11:05