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While focusing in particular on the German financing of rainforest protection in Cameroon, this report also covers the broader issue of how Cameroon’s forest policies are shaped by the REDD process. It takes a case study approach, examining the way such forest protection policies impact on local communities by focusing in on the specific example of those communities whose land has been overlaid by the Takamanda National Park.

The African Development Bank is in the process of developing a new Integrated Safeguards System to guide its future lending in Africa. This paper argues that the measures to protect the rights of indigenous peoples in the proposed draft fall far below accepted international norms and standards and need substantial revision. The African Development Bank needs to adopt a standalone policy on Indigenous Peoples consistent with the rights of peoples and indigenous peoples as set out in the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The current draft text puts the AfDB itself, its borrowers and its clients all at risk of developing projects that are not only contrary to African and international standards, but which are likely to generate social conflict rather than promote sustainable development.

In this report, it is argued that national REDD readiness planning activities in Cameroon, including activities involving the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), lack effective actions to ensure the participation of indigenous peoples and local communities, miss solid data on the drivers of deforestation and gloss over critical land tenure, carbon rights and benefit sharing issues.The nine sub-national REDD projects currently underway lack transparency, meaningful participation or free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and disregard issues of land tenure, customary rights and benefit sharing.This document has ‘open access’, you are free to print a copy from our website.You may also reproduce the text with appropriate acknowledgements to FPP.