How graduates eke a living from charcoal business

While the population needs energy for their daily survival, the harvest of trees for wood and charcoal leads to deforestation and its many consequences.

Pere Dschang, sells firewood and charcoal which he buys from Mbalmayo, 14 kilometres from Yaounde.

He makes the journey to Mbalmayo once a week to purchase the stock and has been doing this for the past 15 years.

A heap of charcoal is sold for FCFA 200 and wood is tied in bundles of FCFA100, with this, he has sent his children to school and ensures his family’s upkeep.

Mbalmayo is renown for wood and charcoal business, and it is here that a group of young men among them certificate holders from professional schools are eking out a living.

“I am a holder of the teachers training certificate, but since I have no job, I had to look for something to do in the meantime”, Jean Pierre Beyeke said.

Beyeke is among a group of five young men who are into charcoal business and buys trees from Robert Ddjanawho who says he inherited the family forest from his father.

Deep into this family forest, the trees are cut, chopped into logs which are placed in a heap and set on fire, while they are wet covered with fresh leaves and ground.

The choice of the trees fell depends on the quality of charcoal they produce.

The fire burns for weeks and by the time the charcoal is ready, bags are filled and sent to the market in Yaoundé and its environs where a bag is sold for about FCFA 40,000 to 60,000.

But, this business is not without risks, the men who produce the charcoal are exposed to excessive heat as they have to watch and ensure that the fire does not burn the whole forest.

“We are exposed to snakes and ants bites”, the young men told this reporter.

While these young men need money, about 80 percent of the Cameroonian population depend on wood or charcoal for energy as confirmed by a study conducted by the Centre for International Forestry Research, CIFOR.

Mbalmayo is just one among other localities where trees are cut for wood and charcoal on a daily basis. If this goes uncheck the forest is at risk of being destroyed leading to deforestation.

CIFOR expert, Anne Marie Tiani, Coordinator of the Climate Change and Forests in the Congo Basin: Synergy between adaptation and Mitigation,COBAM project explains that “the principal climate disturbances are linked to the emission of gas into the atmosphere and toxic gases are a result of deforestation and degradation of the forest”.

She observes that, “on the one hand, forest is essential for mitigation of the negative effects of climate change, by absorbing carbon stocks, while on the other hand, 20 percent of carbon emissions are caused by deforestation.”

The forest is of vital importance to man and the trees have the capacity of stocking Carbon dioxide for a long time in the atmosphere. Forest therefore plays an important ecological role.

But, Ndjana does not know all these theories and has no idea that the forest may disappear and he would have no other source of revenue. He does not even think of planting trees.

“The forest is there and I don’t need to plant trees, when I sell one from this part of the forest I go to the other area of the forest”.

Like Ndjana, Government is battling with containing small and big holders who exploit the forest informally and with no plans of planting trees.

Against this backdrop, CIFOR Researcher, Denis Sonwa maintains that, “there is need for planning, by planting trees as much as possible for the forest to return to its former state”.

Though there are programmes of afforestation championed by the Ministry of Forestry in the north with “Green Sahel”, given that informal forest exploitation is a problem there is need for a strategy to encourage individuals to plant trees.