Geopolitics of EBO forest management in Cameroon: the economic territoriality nation state and local identity

For some two decades now, land conflicts, some as scandalous as others, have dominated the socio-political and media scene in Cameroon. These conflicts, of various kinds, spare no category of spatial entity. This is the context of the EBO forest management conflict. Cameroon's EBO forest, covering some 1,500 km2, has been the focus of much attention since the NGO EBO Forest Research Projet (EFRP) discovered several endangered animal species and some twenty plant species unknown to botanical charts; Encouraged by a number of NGOs, the State of Cameroon attempted to establish this vast area as a national park in 2006, but came up against fierce opposition from indigenous populations, notably the Banen, who saw the State's initiative to create a national park as a project aimed at permanently expropriating their ancestral lands. Since then, the EBO forest territory has become not only the epicenter of geopolitical, economic and ecological issues, but also the scene of confrontations between numerous players with contradictory logics.