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Capturing Critical Institutionalism
18 – 19 April 2013, Kings College, London
A fine mess: Bricolaged forest governance in Cameroon
Verina Ingram1,2, Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen2 & Ton Dietz2,3
Key words: Forest governance, livelihoods, institutions, institutional
bricolage, productive bricolage, value chains
Leaves and nuts from Cameroon’s vast lowland, humid forests;
honey, bamboos and gum arabic from the humid savannah; and
barks, honey, raffia, bamboo and cola nuts from the misty
mountain forests have been used for centuries. They provide
products for subsistence – for medicine, food, energy, tools and
cultural uses and have also been traded near and far, generating
cash and creating markets currently worth over 32 million US$
annually. The value chains of these forest products that move
from harvesters, to processors, traders, and retailers to
consumers worldwide operate in very dynamic, changing and
complex settings. Whilst the harvest zones in Cameroon are characterised by persistent poverty with low levels
of infrastructure, in urban areas people have been gradually becoming wealthier and their access to factors of
development has increased, stimulating economic growth. These forests are being cleared at increasing rates to
make way for urbanisation and infrastructure, for agriculture, and to extract timber and mineral resources. This
paper disentangles the “fine mess” of the arrangements governing these products and their chains, by
introducing and characterising the different governance arrangements and institutions. It examines the impacts
of how they interact and their combined impacts on the livelihoods of those involved in the value chains and
the sustainability thereof. The challenges and opportunities for development and conservation policy are
addressed, using examples of successes and failures.
These forest product chains are embedded in hybrid governance systems, messy with overlapping and multiple
layers of institutions, the configurations of which have changed dramatically over time. For example, there are
voids where no institutions govern certain practices of access to resources and to markets and the chains
themselves, such as for the honey chain until recently. Here beekeepers and enterprises have used collective
action and created market-based institutions, such as organic and geographic indication certification, as a way
to seek control of resources and markets. Some involved in the chains, notably NGOs, project-related and
market-based organisations, fulfil roles normally the reserve of the state. They manage and monitor (protected)
forest areas, create new institutions such as producer and trading organisations and develop new hybrids of
customary and statutory regulations, such as community forests. They have also sought to maintain new
institutions by deliberately building the social and economic capacities of organisations to enforce new
institutions, illustrated by the pygeum chain. The bark from this tree found only in the mountains of Africa
forms a key ingredient for medicines treating prostate problems. In the eru chain, in which the leaves of a
forest liana become a nutritious and popular vegetable, traded across Central Africa and to diaspora globally,
the state performs its duties. In other chains, such as for bamboo, it does not – with the product completely
unregulated formally. Accesses to the species from which these products originate and to markets for their sale
are instead strongly governed by customary rules. Highly valuable traditional products such as raffia palm
wine and cola nuts remain largely governed by traditional, local institutions, which control both access to the
species and the product’s markets. The trade in these products is changing as societal change decreases their
importance, as alternatives to the products (like bottled beer) become more commonplace, and as new hybrid
institutions created sometimes by those involved in the trade, and sometimes by others seeking to claim
valuable, productive land, vie for control of resources and markets. Often when statutory regulations are laid
down, they are clouded and thwarted by a parallel layer of governance by corruption: perverting access to
markets and resources, adding to costs and trade unpredictability. Customary authorities, projects, civil society
and market institutions fill some regulatory voids.

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Most governance arrangements concentrate on either rights or responsibilities that secure access to the forest
resources these products are derived from, or access to their markets, but rarely both. This incongruence makes
it difficult to disentangle how the bricolaged arrangements and institutions impact livelihoods and their
sustainability. A bricolage (from the French for ‘fiddle tinker’ or a do-it-your-selfer, making creative use of
whatever materials are available to complete a task, regardless of their original purpose) refers to diverse
theoretical and philosophical human sciences concepts (Kincheloe 2001). Bricolage allows a broad
exploration through different lenses that reflect the reality of these research subjects. Bricolage is also a line of
thought in philosophy and in anthropology (Lévi-Strauss 1966), referring to spontaneous action or borrowing
concepts from a heritage. In institutional governance, bricolage (Cleaver 2002) refers to multiple identities of
bricoleurs, cross cultural borrowing, multipurpose institutions and arrangements and norms which foster
cooperation.
The result of this bricolage is this “fine mess” of arrangements governing these products and their chains. This
context seems unlikely to be smoothed into a mono-governance system anytime in the near future. Land and
regulatory reforms have been slow, whilst customary rulers still cling to power in the remoter mountain tops,
deep forest and distant savannah villages, the culture of corruption and ‘’big men’’ is pervasive. Bricolage is
not new, demonstrated by the chequered history of different governance arrangements in each chain. However,
the increasing influence of new economic, cognitive and social institutions is creating a context ripe for
multiple, sometimes competing governance arrangements. Thus, for individuals and organisations in forest
product value chains, it seems that they are forced to stay, and become even more adept bricoleurs. They make
the best of the arrangements in which they find themselves, and creatively use capitals available. They build on
natural capital to construct new governance arrangements and/or remould existing ones aiming to meet their
current objectives, circumstances and livelihoods. Like actors in silent films, the actors in the chains often do
not have a voice - in formal governance arrangements - thus they act and create their own "messy"
arrangements. This situation reflects notions of institutional bricolage: the dynamic and multiple identities of
the bricoleurs and multi-purpose institutional arrangements and the crafting arrangements which advance
livelihoods, individually and collectively. It also reflects productive bricolage with its focus on livelihoods as
the flexible and dynamic crafting of livelihood options and associated impacts on landscapes.
The impacts of such governance arrangements on the livelihoods of those involved in the value chains and the
sustainability thereof are as varied as the species and products. However, a few general trends can be seen.
One is that women, traditionally forest gathers and family bearers, are gradually profiting more from the
increased fluidness of the socio-economic context and their ability to generate not just subsistence products but
also additional cash incomes. This diversification, safety-net strategy however does not lift harvesters
significantly above the average poverty level of the regions they live in or national level. Male harvesters tend
to join the chains when commercial product values increase, illustrated by the bush mango, eru and gum arabic
chains. Different strategies are pursued, from elites blending customary and statutory rights to appropriate land
and resources, to young males opportunistically ignoring customary and regulatory systems, to earn sometimes
significantly higher than average incomes. The highest profits, but also highest risks, are generally found
amongst traders, wholesalers and exporters. This numerically small group of actors, both male and female,
play along with regulatory systems, and use parallel strategies of market-based, collective action, ethnic ties
and corruption to limit the, sometimes, high losses that can result as perishable products become held up by
corruption, bureaucracy and poor infrastructure. Retailers generally earn higher incomes than harvesters, but
not significantly higher than national averages. They mainly use collective action to seek to control prices,
quantity and product quality. Whereas harvesters use the products as one of many income sources, for the
actors further in the chain, largely urban-based, they have fewer income generating opportunities, thus seek to
control them mainly though collective and market based systems. Thus, further form the forest, average
incomes can increase by 60%, but so does dependence upon a smaller number of income generating strategies
and products: from an average of 6 sources for harvesters, to 2 for exporters and 4 for retailers. Whereas 38%
of harvesters rank the specific product as their main source of household income, 42% of exporters and 52% of
retailers do- highlighting how dependence increases further along the chain from the forest and their
livelihoods are characterised by specialisation and risk taking.. Most of the chains are segmented, with very
few actors engaging or controlling the whole chain from access to resources to access to markets.
The eru, pygeum bark and apiculture products chains how however that increasingly institutions are created as
new strategies to reduce such vulnerabilities. They are often exclusionary, as actors seek to take control of
parts of a chain and exclude others, sometimes temporarily, by creating competitive advantage, by adding
value to various assets: natural, economic, human, socio-economic and political. This is particularly the case
when customary institutions do not control outside of the sphere of local markets, are slow or not amenable to
change, and when products become more widely traded as mainstreamed or niche products, and when statutory

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institutions are fragile, weak, unenforced and/or corrupt. The continued failure of formal institutions to ensure
and enforce rules to ensure the sustainability of highly valued, traded products has been a major challenge for
many actors in the chains. Similarly, as demand for some of these products has increased steadily, dramatically
in the case of products like eru and pygeum, control has been sought in different ways. This is also driven as
the availability of the species from which these high value products originate have become scarcer: due to
deforestation and degradation, and over-harvesting, Cultivation is one of the most common strategies used,
with not only harvesters, but diverse new types of actors joining the chain, cultivating forest species and
bringing them under different governance regimes as private property or under community management, either
under law through community forests or under new collective and customary systems. In many of the more
ancient chains such as honey, cola nuts and raffia wine, actors in the chain have increased cultivation and
associated governance systems to secure supply. However, for high-value, high-demand products, institutional
designs (Ostrom 1990, Scott 2001, Cox, Arnold et al. 2010) to assure sustainable governance have barely been
able to keep pace. This is particularly for species for which their ecology, the parts used and method of harvest
make them vulnerable to over-exploitation. Thus the majority of the trade in bamboo, gum arabic, bush mango
and eru is based on wild harvested products and is unsustainable. Thus the livelihoods of those dependent upon
these products are less sustainable using Chambers and Conway’s (1991) definition of sustainable livelihoods:
less able to cope with risks and recover from stresses, shocks and less able to maintain or enhance the
capabilities and assets of people involved in the chains, both now and in the future, while not undermining the
natural resource base, the species and its products, upon which their livelihoods are based.
Emerging, bricolaged governance systems offer glimmers of hope and opportunity that may reconcile both
poverty alleviation/development and conservation agendas. Governance arrangements which combine control
of access to resources and to markets appear better at creating sustainable chains and livelihoods, for example
the organic certified honey and geographic indication systems. However, as these are still young and embrace
a small number of people, their efficacy remains to be tested. Combinations of project-based, statutory and
market-led arrangements that promote, support and encourage cultivation, and build on customary knowledge
and rules, have also been effective in creating “win-wins”. However, these tend to be exclusive - such as the
cola, raffia and gum arabic chains - often restricting access for example, to certain ethnic groups or sexes.
Information sharing, role models, capacity building and training have helped overcome this on some chains,
bringing and resulting from social-cultural changes, the long term implications of which also remain to be
seen. Recent experiments in developing new statutory systems, such as for pygeum, drawing on the successful
project-based institutions, building on new hybrid forms of collective action and customary rules, taking a
pragmatic approach to using statutory instruments and borrowing from agricultural and forestry models of
governance, also show promise. What is clear in this “mess” is that the outcomes and impacts of institutional
design are extremely difficult to predict in the short term, an understanding of the natural cycles of the species
upon which products are based is critical if the livelihoods based upon these are to be sustained. Also, “getting
into the mess” is essential to understanding.
1 Sustainable Markets & Chains Group, Agricultural Economics Institute, Wageningen University and
Research Centres, PO Box 29703, 2502 LS, Den Haag, The Netherlands verina.ingram@wur.nl
2 Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of
Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
3 African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands
References
Chambers, R. and G. Conway (1991). Sustainable rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century,
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Cleaver, F. (2002). "Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness of Natural Resource
Management." European Journal of Development Research 14(2): 11-30.
Cox, M., G. Arnold and S. V. Tomás (2010). "A review of design principles for community-based natural
resource management." Ecology and Society 15(4): 38.
Kincheloe, J. L. (2001). "Describing the bricolage: Conceptualizing a new rigor in qualitative research."
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Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
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Scott, W. R. (2001). Institutions and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.