Tropenbos International has received the green light from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to start a research and capacity building programme in Cameroon, with additional activities in the Congo Basin, in support of the conservation and wise use of tropical forests. The new programme started mid 2008 and will run until 2011. Tropenbos International is not new to Cameroon. Between 1994 and 2002, Tropenbos International conducted a research and capacity building programme in South Cameroon designed to assist Cameroon in achieving sustainable forest management.

Research activities will concentrate on the following aspects:

1. Domestic timber market in relation to community/communal forests.
2. Sustainable timber production by analysing and re-measuring permanent sample plots established in the mid-1990s to attain growth & yield data to be used in the national allowed yield debate. This will also feed into the biomass or carbon sink assessment of (un)logged forests to be combined with remote sensing techniques as a monitoring tool it can be used in the national REDD positioning for the UN Climate Change discussions.
3. The impact of large-scale infrastructural developments on forests and livelihoods.
4. Sustainable financing mechanisms for forests.

The Tropenbos International Congo-Basin Programme (TBI Congo-Basin) already established a partnership with the GEF sponsored TRIDOM project which started late 2008 and is to last until 2015. This project concerns the conservation of Trans-boundary biodiversity in the Dja -Odzala - Minkebe (TRIDOM) interzone in Gabon, Republic of Congo and Cameroon. In total nine protected areas are included in the project area: in Gabon it concerns the Minkebe NP, Ivindo NP and Mwagne NP, in Congo it concerns the Odzala-Kokoua NP and Lossi Reserve, while in Cameroon it concerns the Dja NP, Nki NP, Boumba-Bek NP and Mengame Gorilla Reserve. The globally important biodiversity in these protected areas and their interzones, however, are increasingly under severe threats from commercial logging and mining, large-scale commercial hunting for wild meat and ivory, often using logging concession access roads. TBI Congo-Basin will assist the TRIDOM project through investigating how best to mitigate these threats and especially those caused by large-scale infrastructural developments such as by mining and (rail)road construction and by finding sustainable financing mechanisms needed to achieve the conservation objectives.

The TBI Congo-Basin is preparing to engage in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and has commissioned a desk study, which will be followed by a first visit to the country to meet the most important stakeholders in the forest sector and especially potential partners in the field of forestry education and research. This should set the research agenda after a priority setting exercise with experts in Europe who deal with DRC later this year.