1. 1Capturing Critical Institutionalism18 19 April 2013, Kings College, LondonA fine mess: Bricolaged forest governance in CameroonVerina Ingram1,2, Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen2 & Ton Dietz2,3Key words: Forest governance, livelihoods, institutions, institutionalbricolage, productive bricolage, value chainsLeaves and nuts from Cameroons vast lowland, humid forests;honey, bamboos and gum arabic from the humid savannah; andbarks, honey, raffia, bamboo and cola nuts from the mistymountain forests have been used for centuries. They provideproducts for subsistence for medicine, food, energy, tools andcultural uses and have also been traded near and far, generatingcash and creating markets currently worth over 32 million US$annually. The value chains of these forest products that movefrom harvesters, to processors, traders, and retailers toconsumers worldwide operate in very dynamic, changing andcomplex settings. Whilst the harvest zones in Cameroon are characterised by persistent poverty with low levelsof infrastructure, in urban areas people have been gradually becoming wealthier and their access to factors ofdevelopment has increased, stimulating economic growth. These forests are being cleared at increasing rates tomake way for urbanisation and infrastructure, for agriculture, and to extract timber and mineral resources. Thispaper disentangles the fine mess of the arrangements governing these products and their chains, byintroducing and characterising the different governance arrangements and institutions. It examines the impactsof how they interact and their combined impacts on the livelihoods of those involved in the value chains andthe sustainability thereof. The challenges and opportunities for development and conservation policy areaddressed, using examples of successes and failures.These forest product chains are embedded in hybrid governance systems, messy with overlapping and multiplelayers of institutions, the configurations of which have changed dramatically over time. For example, there arevoids where no institutions govern certain practices of access to resources and to markets and the chainsthemselves, such as for the honey chain until recently. Here beekeepers and enterprises have used collectiveaction and created market-based institutions, such as organic and geographic indication certification, as a wayto seek control of resources and markets. Some involved in the chains, notably NGOs, project-related andmarket-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 ofcustomary and statutory regulations, such as community forests. They have also sought to maintain newinstitutions by deliberately building the social and economic capacities of organisations to enforce newinstitutions, illustrated by the pygeum chain. The bark from this tree found only in the mountains of Africaforms a key ingredient for medicines treating prostate problems. In the eru chain, in which the leaves of aforest 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 completelyunregulated formally. Accesses to the species from which these products originate and to markets for their saleare instead strongly governed by customary rules. Highly valuable traditional products such as raffia palmwine and cola nuts remain largely governed by traditional, local institutions, which control both access to thespecies and the products markets. The trade in these products is changing as societal change decreases theirimportance, as alternatives to the products (like bottled beer) become more commonplace, and as new hybridinstitutions created sometimes by those involved in the trade, and sometimes by others seeking to claimvaluable, productive land, vie for control of resources and markets. Often when statutory regulations are laiddown, they are clouded and thwarted by a parallel layer of governance by corruption: perverting access tomarkets and resources, adding to costs and trade unpredictability. Customary authorities, projects, civil societyand market institutions fill some regulatory voids.

2. 2Most governance arrangements concentrate on either rights or responsibilities that secure access to the forestresources these products are derived from, or access to their markets, but rarely both. This incongruence makesit difficult to disentangle how the bricolaged arrangements and institutions impact livelihoods and theirsustainability. A bricolage (from the French for fiddle tinker or a do-it-your-selfer, making creative use ofwhatever materials are available to complete a task, regardless of their original purpose) refers to diversetheoretical and philosophical human sciences concepts (Kincheloe 2001). Bricolage allows a broadexploration through different lenses that reflect the reality of these research subjects. Bricolage is also a line ofthought in philosophy and in anthropology (Lvi-Strauss 1966), referring to spontaneous action or borrowingconcepts from a heritage. In institutional governance, bricolage (Cleaver 2002) refers to multiple identities ofbricoleurs, cross cultural borrowing, multipurpose institutions and arrangements and norms which fostercooperation.The result of this bricolage is this fine mess of arrangements governing these products and their chains. Thiscontext seems unlikely to be smoothed into a mono-governance system anytime in the near future. Land andregulatory 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 isnot 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 formultiple, sometimes competing governance arrangements. Thus, for individuals and organisations in forestproduct value chains, it seems that they are forced to stay, and become even more adept bricoleurs. They makethe best of the arrangements in which they find themselves, and creatively use capitals available. They build onnatural capital to construct new governance arrangements and/or remould existing ones aiming to meet theircurrent objectives, circumstances and livelihoods. Like actors in silent films, the actors in the chains often donot 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 ofthe bricoleurs and multi-purpose institutional arrangements and the crafting arrangements which advancelivelihoods, individually and collectively. It also reflects productive bricolage with its focus on livelihoods asthe 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 thesustainability 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 theincreased fluidness of the socio-economic context and their ability to generate not just subsistence products butalso additional cash incomes. This diversification, safety-net strategy however does not lift harvesterssignificantly above the average poverty level of the regions they live in or national level. Male harvesters tendto join the chains when commercial product values increase, illustrated by the bush mango, eru and gum arabicchains. Different strategies are pursued, from elites blending customary and statutory rights to appropriate landand resources, to young males opportunistically ignoring customary and regulatory systems, to earn sometimessignificantly higher than average incomes. The highest profits, but also highest risks, are generally foundamongst 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 tiesand corruption to limit the, sometimes, high losses that can result as perishable products become held up bycorruption, bureaucracy and poor infrastructure. Retailers generally earn higher incomes than harvesters, butnot 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 theactors further in the chain, largely urban-based, they have fewer income generating opportunities, thus seek tocontrol them mainly though collective and market based systems. Thus, further form the forest, averageincomes can increase by 60%, but so does dependence upon a smaller number of income generating strategiesand 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% ofretailers do- highlighting how dependence increases further along the chain from the forest and theirlivelihoods are characterised by specialisation and risk taking.. Most of the chains are segmented, with veryfew 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 asnew strategies to reduce such vulnerabilities. They are often exclusionary, as actors seek to take control ofparts of a chain and exclude others, sometimes temporarily, by creating competitive advantage, by addingvalue to various assets: natural, economic, human, socio-economic and political. This is particularly the casewhen customary institutions do not control outside of the sphere of local markets, are slow or not amenable tochange, and when products become more widely traded as mainstreamed or niche products, and when statutory 3. 3institutions are fragile, weak, unenforced and/or corrupt. The continued failure of formal institutions to ensureand enforce rules to ensure the sustainability of highly valued, traded products has been a major challenge formany actors in the chains. Similarly, as demand for some of these products has increased steadily, dramaticallyin the case of products like eru and pygeum, control has been sought in different ways. This is also driven asthe availability of the species from which these high value products originate have become scarcer: due todeforestation 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 andbringing them under different governance regimes as private property or under community management, eitherunder law through community forests or under new collective and customary systems. In many of the moreancient chains such as honey, cola nuts and raffia wine, actors in the chain have increased cultivation andassociated governance systems to secure supply. However, for high-value, high-demand products, institutionaldesigns (Ostrom 1990, Scott 2001, Cox, Arnold et al. 2010) to assure sustainable governance have barely beenable to keep pace. This is particularly for species for which their ecology, the parts used and method of harvestmake them vulnerable to over-exploitation. Thus the majority of the trade in bamboo, gum arabic, bush mangoand eru is based on wild harvested products and is unsustainable. Thus the livelihoods of those dependent uponthese products are less sustainable using Chambers and Conways (1991) definition of sustainable livelihoods:less able to cope with risks and recover from stresses, shocks and less able to maintain or enhance thecapabilities and assets of people involved in the chains, both now and in the future, while not undermining thenatural 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 bothpoverty alleviation/development and conservation agendas. Governance arrangements which combine controlof access to resources and to markets appear better at creating sustainable chains and livelihoods, for examplethe organic certified honey and geographic indication systems. However, as these are still young and embracea small number of people, their efficacy remains to be tested. Combinations of project-based, statutory andmarket-led arrangements that promote, support and encourage cultivation, and build on customary knowledgeand rules, have also been effective in creating win-wins. However, these tend to be exclusive - such as thecola, 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 beseen. Recent experiments in developing new statutory systems, such as for pygeum, drawing on the successfulproject-based institutions, building on new hybrid forms of collective action and customary rules, taking apragmatic approach to using statutory instruments and borrowing from agricultural and forestry models ofgovernance, also show promise. What is clear in this mess is that the outcomes and impacts of institutionaldesign are extremely difficult to predict in the short term, an understanding of the natural cycles of the speciesupon which products are based is critical if the livelihoods based upon these are to be sustained. Also, gettinginto the mess is essential to understanding.1 Sustainable Markets & Chains Group, Agricultural Economics Institute, Wageningen University andResearch Centres, PO Box 29703, 2502 LS, Den Haag, The Netherlands verina.ingram@wur.nl2 Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University ofAmsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands3 African Studies Centre, Leiden, the NetherlandsReferencesChambers, R. and G. Conway (1991). Sustainable rural livelihoods: practical concepts for the 21st century,IDS.Cleaver, F. (2002). "Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness of Natural ResourceManagement." 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