Power dynamics and actor interests in community forestry: Insights from Mount Cameroon National Park buffer zones

Community forestry in Cameroon has underperformed in promoting participatory sustainable forest management, improving community livelihood and equitable benefit sharing predominantly due to the complex power dynamics within its governance. A comprehensive understanding of buffer zone transformation into CF, power dynamics, and the mechanisms through which diverse actors with often competing interests drive outcomes in this sensitive landscape remains a critical gap in existing literature. This study applies a novel Power-interest-outcome (PIO) framework from integrating ACP framework and the PIDO approach to assess the power dynamic and actors’ interest in Etinde, Woteva and Bakingili CFs buffering the Mount Cameroon National Park. We identified dominant and actor’s constellation via mixed-method of household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and social network analysis, assess their mobilisation of coercion, incentive, and dominant information, categorised their ecological, economic, and social interests and examined how these interests, mediated by constellations, shape CF outcomes.
Findings revealed three actor constellation-driven contested CF governance process dominated by State-Donor constellation which mobilises coercion, incentives and dominant information for their ecological interest, resulting to a moderate-positive ecological outcome. Economic and social outcomes are constrained by elite capture, with communities receiving less than 10% of intended revenue, while reinforced customary elite legitimacy hindered their participation, demonstrating that dominant actors strategically shape CF outcomes, marginalising community priorities. Theoretically, this paper advances ACP by integrating actor-interest-outcome dynamics. Practically, it highlights policies to address livelihood and elite capture concerns. Future research should explore longitudinal power shifts and comparative analyses across governance contexts.

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