CIFOR-ICRAF
Peasant-Forest Committees (CPFs) in Cameroon are intended to support community participation in forest management, but their effectiveness is limited by governance, resource, and capacity challenges. Strengthening training, representation, and local engagement is therefore essential.
Across the Congo Basin, forest concessions are increasingly adopting sustainable management and certification, but results remain uneven. This highlights the need to better assess impacts across certified and non-certified areas, particularly on social, environmental, and governance outcomes.
Overall, effective forest governance depends on strong local participation mechanisms, clear rights, accountability, and tangible benefits for communities, supported by regional initiatives promoting sustainability and impact monitoring.
Duties and responsibilities
The Consultant will be responsible for carrying out the following tasks:
- Conduct a systematic analysis of Peasant-Forest Committees (CPFs) in Cameroon and equivalent participatory mechanisms in the Congo Basin.
- Map roles, responsibilities, and operating methods of CPFs and comparable structures (village committees, community forests/CFCL).
- Compare effectiveness of certified (FSC/PAFC) versus non-certified concessions across social, environmental, and governance dimensions.
- Identify success and failure factors including legal frameworks, accountability, inclusiveness, and capacity-building needs.
- Analyze complementarities between CPFs and concessionary instruments such as management plans, certification processes, social clauses, and benefit-sharing mechanisms.
- Develop roadmaps and recommendations for administrations, operators, communities, and certifiers to optimize and scale up participatory mechanisms.
- Produce deliverables including inception report, analytical review, indicator database, evaluation report, recommendations note, presentation slides, and a draft scientific article/policy brief.
- Facilitate multi-stakeholder engagement through interviews, case studies, workshops, and validation sessions.
Key Responsibilities (Deliverables)
- Inception report (protocol, analysis framework, sampling, tools).
- Analytical review (CPF texts, FSC/PAFC standards, governance literature).
- Database (social/environmental/governance indicator matrix).
- Prepare an evaluation report (results, comparisons, case studies).
- PPT presentation of findings.
- Produce a Scientific article and policy brief for decision-makers/donors.
- Submit a Final Assessment Report incorporating all feedback
Education, knowledge and experience
• Masters degree or Phd in forestry, environmental governance, social sciences, or a related field. • Proven experience (>=5 years) in evaluating participatory mechanisms and local governance in forest concessions; in-depth knowledge of FSC/PAFC. • Good knolowledge forest looging and forest management • Proficiency in qualitative methods (interviews, case studies, document analysis) and comparative synthesis. • Excellent multi-stakeholder facilitation skills (workshops, validation). • Fluency in French and/or English.
Terms and conditions
• Duration: 04 months • Level of Effort: 10 working days per month • Location: Home-based consultancy with virtual coordination meetings., thus field activities and Occasional interaction with the CIFOR Cameroon Country Office (Yaoundé) may be required. • Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications no later than April 4, 2026 • Applications must be sent by email to: cifor-cameroon@cifor-icraf.org
The subject line must read: “Farmer- Forest committee – (your name)”
• The application must be submitted as a single PDF document named:
- A detailed motivation letter outlining relevant experience.
- An updated Curriculum Vitae (CV).
- Evidence of previous relevant work (publications, modelling outputs, portfolio, reports, or links
• Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.