Olenga, a Baka boy, goes hunting for small birds in the forest behind his village.

By Simon Hoyte, and Felix Mangombe.

Read the full paper here.

Conservation in tropical rainforest is turning a corner: rather than protecting nature at the expense of local people, more and more the attitude is shifting towards collaborating with communities who live in the regions which boasts such impressive biodiversity. But in order to do this, forest managers have to try to understand how Indigenous and local people view their forests and what traditional ways they have to sustain it. In our study, we explore the case of the Baka, a hunter-gatherer group living in the forested areas of Cameroon, Gabon, and Congo.

The authors, an anthropologist who spent many months living in a Baka village and an elder from the village itself, compiled and analysed information about the ways that the Baka interact with and talk about the forest over a period of two and a half years. Despite having reduced forest access and now living on the side of a road, we found that the village held very strong relationships with the forest. Central to these relationships is the belief that the Baka were created with the forest and interact with forest spirits.

When we looked at what these relationships mean for how the Baka use resources and ensure the future of the forest, it’s clear that there is no sense of a need to give thanks or give back for meat, honey, wood, or other things that are taken, but rather that everything must be shared properly. Through sharing, they avoid hoarding of resources by few and this achieves joy for everybody. Because the Baka do not recognise the forest as separate from themselves, joy for people also means joy and abundance for the forest.

The findings of our research are most important for forest managers because conservation and industry continue to carry out practices which harm both people and forests. If these actors take onboard the Baka principles of sharing, a more certain future for both is achievable.