LIMBE CONFERENCE

BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN AFRICAN RAINFORESTS

Limbe Botanic Garden, Cameroon, 17-24 January 1997

CONFERENCE RECOMMENDATIONS

A conference was held at the Limbe Botanic Gardens in Cameroon from 17th-24 January 1997 on the theme of biodiversity conservation in African tropical rain forests. The meeting inaugurated the opening of the newly built Conference and Visitor Centre at the Limbe Gardens.

Over 80 people attended the week-long meeting with participants coming from more than 10 African rainforest countries - Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda, as well as scientists from Europe and North America..

The meeting was sponsored by Earthwatch Europe with a grant from the European Union; the local host was the Mount Cameroon Project whose headquarters are based at the Limbe Gardens. Additional co-ordination was provided by the UK Tropical Forest Forum.

The meeting considered the linkages between the scientific study of biodiversity, especially inventory, monitoring and assessment, and the factors important to forest management.

Four Working Groups were convened to discuss issues in considerable depth and they concluded their discussions with a set of recommendations. The Working groups were:

• Biodiversity inventory, monitoring and assessment (Group One)
• Participatory approaches to forest management and conservation (Group Two)
• Institutional frameworks for forest conservation (Group Three)
• Valuing the Forest (Group Four)

The proceedings of the meeting are available from:

• Earthwatch Europe, Belsyre Court, 57 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HU, UK.
  Fax 00 44 (0) 1865 311600. E-mail: info@uk.earthwatch.org