Culture et gestion de l’environnement pour le développement durable : cas de l’exploitation forestière à mbang

Abstract

This research work, titled “Culture and Environmental Management for Sustainable Development: The Case of Forest Exploitation in Mbang,” examines the impact of the activities carried out by the Société Forestière et Industrielle du Cameroun (SFID) on the sociocultural and environmental transformations experienced by the Baka community in the Mbang municipality. Since the arrival of this company, the State’s control over natural resources and their transfer to foreign logging enterprises have led to the gradual displacement of the Baka from their ancestral territories, which are deeply connected to their identity, subsistence practices, and ecological knowledge. This situation raises the central research question: to what extent have SFID’s activities modified the Baka’s way of life and their traditional relationship with the forest? The main hypothesis posits that the transformations observed in the daily life, environmental practices, and sociocultural organization of the Baka are primarily the result of SFID’s actions and the institutional constraints they generate. To examine this hypothesis, the study adopts an approach grounded in ethnomethodology, cultural ecology, and institutionalism, enabling an analysis of the Baka’s adaptive strategies, the interactions between culture and the natural environment, and the influence of political structures on forest management. The findings reveal that Baka culture has long constituted an effective model of sustainable environmental management, built upon traditional harvesting techniques, an intimate knowledge of forest ecosystems, and a strong spiritualization of nature. However, the arrival of SFID has caused restricted access to forest resources, altered subsistence patterns, increased dependence on neighboring Bangando and Mézimé populations, and weakened customary institutions. The study concludes that sustainable environmental management in this region requires the recognition of indigenous knowledge systems, the effective involvement of the Baka in forest governance, and a coherent articulation between State policies and local sociocultural dynamics.