To strengthen community engagement: AWF, stakeholders review, validate revised Campo-Ma’an management plan.

AWF organised the workshop in collaboration with the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, MINFOF, with the technical and financial support from the GEF 7 Project. 

Officials said the workshop closes a three-year process that began in 2023, It involved indigenous peoples and local communities, administrative authorities, the private sector, technical and financial partners.

Several levels of consultation held in the area of Ma'an, Akom II, Niete, and Campo and rounded with regional validation held in Ebolowa on July 21, 2026. 

The Country Director of African Wildlife Foundation, Norbert Sonne, told participants that the national validation workshop was to ensure the strategic document captures the priorities or concerns raised by all the stakeholders during local and regional level consultations. 

“This is the last stage to make sure that everything is aligned, and all the stakeholders have been captured in the process,” Sonne stated. 

He said the major priorities of the new management plan articulates on “how we manage wildlife, secure wildlife in the park, ecological monitoring, checking what we have in the landscape and park, and consider how we engage local communities”. 

The AWF Country Director harped on the need to engage with local communities throuugh community development, consultation, and collaboration. 

“In the Campo-Ma'an landscape, we have many stakeholders, the private sector, and we make sure that the private sector becomes a key player in the landscape in terms of supporting the protected area management,” Sonne noted. 

He said in the new document, more emphasis has been put on local communities. “…they were not neglected before,” he stated, noting that in the present context, conservation is more “human-centered”.

“We have increased the investment on the local communities to make sure that we don't conserve for the sake of conservation, but conservation contributes to local development,” Sonne said.  

Sonne said the validated doocument will help curb issues of claims or complaints as it aligns with the expectations and concerns of all stakeholders. 

Sonne said AWF will increase investments at the community level in terms of ecotourism infrastructure, direct benefits for local communities, agricultural support, or income-generating activities. 

Vision to reconcile conservation and development 

Forestry Engineer and Protected Areas Management Expert, Memvi Abessolo Charles, said the management of Campo-Ma'an National Park was created in the 2000s. 

He said two management plans have been implemented in the management of the plan. 

“The third management plan comes at a specific moment in the operation of the park, given its socio-economic environment. The Campo-Ma'an area has for some time been seen as a priority area for the development of our country, with several structural projects and other activities such as agro-industries, dam projects, road projects, and the Kribi Deep Seaport project,” the Conservator said. 

He mentioned challenges and said the new document will reconcile development with biodiversity conservation which has always “been perceived negatively.

This, he explained, is because “local populations do not really see the direct benefits or payoffs of conservation” but “more constraints, such as human-wildlife conflicts and other issues”.

He also cited the aspecct of effective involvement of local communities in biodiversity conservation, noting that conservators cannot manage a protected area if the populations living around it do not support it.

“All the projects surrounding the park come with constraints and impacts, and those impacts must be mitigated. Stakeholders and everyone operating in the Campo-Ma'an landscape must contribute their support so that we can pool all necessary efforts to ensure that conservation truly goes hand in hand with development in the Campo-Ma'an landscape,” he said.  

He mentioned the need to make conservation really appreciated by the community by bringing the benefit. 

“We have the project of gorilla habituation where we have proposed benefit-sharing mechanisms so that the community can also get something from conservation,” he said. 

The validated plan includes the ecotourism programme, innovation in governance to move the structuration of the park from sectors to antennas. 

The new plan also includes a vision, enhanced transboundary programmes that put into consideration animal survival corridors. It has also witnessed an increase in budget from six to nine billion FCFA in the next five years of its implementation. a

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3920 of Friday September 25, 2026