country with depleted soils and forests, and communi-ties negatively impacted by mining. The IMF has adopted a short-term approach that undermines Cote d’Ivoire’s natural resource base.

Cameroon

Cameroon is one of the most ecologically diverse countries on the African continent. Between coastal mangrove swamps and Mount Cameroon, West Africa’s highest mountain, lies a hot and humid southern region of dense tropical forests of mahogany, ebony and obeche trees. There are over 9,000 plant species in Cameroon, 150 of which are found nowhere else in the world. Cameroon’s forest resources are estimated at 22 million hectares, of which 14 million are tropical rainforest. Intensive logging now threatens the country’s tropical rainforests and the habitat of over 40 species of wildlife, leaving gorillas, elephants, and the black rhinoceros threatened with extinction.

Cameroon could once boast of one of the highest incomes on the African continent. Until 1982, rich oil reserves facilitated dramatic economic growth, after which oil crisis left the country with a shrinking GDP and growing external debt. In the face of an economic crisis, Cameroon implemented a series of IMF structural adjustment programs beginning in 1988 and contin uing into the present. The IMF’s conditions included efforts to diversify the economy and stimulate export production in the non-oil sectors.

Because of Cameroon’s wealth of forests, logging these unharvested forests became an attractive option to diversify the economy. The IMF encouraged the government to reduce export taxes on forest products and devalue the currency. With these macroeconomic policies in place, forest products production grew sharply, the scale of the logging industry expanded, and exports of forest products increased significantly, leading to widespread deforestation of these ecologically important forests of west-central Africa. After the 1994 currency devaluation, the number of logging enterprises increased from 194 to 351 in 1995.⁶ Lumber exports grew by 49.6% between 1995-96 and 1996-97.⁷

In addition to tapping into Cameroon’s wealth of forests, the IMF’s requirements to shrink government spending and reduce government employment negatively affected environmental programs. Between 1995 and 1997 total government employment was reduced by 5,500. Nearly 1000 government positions were eliminated from the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector, an 8 percent decrease. In contrast, the Defense Ministry increased by 16 percent, adding over 4500 employees.⁸

The lack of financial resources and personnel to enforce forest protection, combined with few incentives for appropriate forest management and land use by loggers and rural dwellers, served to undermine any potential for sustainable forestry management practices. In spite of the creation of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in 1992, Cameroon’s membership in the International Timber Trade Organization, and the passage of a new Forestry Code in 1994 as a result of SAP requirements to reform the forestry sector, the inability to finance and enforce these efforts has resulted in the wholesale destruction of one of Cameroon’s most valuable environmental resources.

In a move to counteract these disincentives for forest conservation, the Cameroon government enacted a ban on log exports in June 1999. However, this new law has major loopholes (such as excluding the two main export species) and does not address the fundamental problem: the Cameroon government’s economic incentives encourage the exploitation, rather than the protection, of its critical forests.