Projects

RAPHIA (2015-2017) - Palms for the future of Africa: Multidimensional approaches to the socio-economics, resilience and sustainable harvesting of Raphia species in Cameroon - Funded by Agropolis Fondation (France)

Project leader: T Couvreur

Scientists involved from our team : T Couvreur, G Dauby, C Mariac, N Scarcelli

It is widely recognized that harvesting of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) plays a central role in reducing poverty and ensuring food security in the tropics. Transformative and interdisciplinary ap-proaches that study current and future of NTFPs socio-economic impact and sustainable harvest are rare, especially in low-income food-deficit countries such as Cameroon. Palms rank as one of the most useful plant families in the tropics providing numerous economic, ecological and societal benefits. The project RAPHIA relies on interdisciplinary and integrated approaches to describe, characterize and model the economic importance and future trends of the most useful but least known of all African palm genera, Raphia. We aim to: 1) Document and quantify the current socio-economic importance of Raphia species in Cameroon; 2) Evaluate the resilience of Raphia species in Cameroon to over harvesting and climate change; and 3) Assess recent innovations for the sustainable harvesting of Raphia species and promote Raphia as an important natural capital in Cameroon.

Associated publications:

Helmstetter AJ, Kamga SM, Bethune K, Lautenschläger T, Zizka A, Bacon CD, Wieringa JJ, Stauffer F, Antonelli A, Sonké B, Couvreur TLP (2020) Unraveling the phylogenomic relationships of the most diverse African palm genus Raphia (Calamoideae, Arecaceae). Plants 9(4):549

Kamga SM, Brokamp G, Cosiaux A, Awono A, Fürniss S, Barfod AS, Muafor FJ, Le Gall P, Sonké B, Couvreur TLP (2020) Use and Cultural Significance of Raphia Palms. Economic Botany 74:207-225

Kamga SM, Sonké B, Couvreur TLP (2019) Raphia vinifera (Arecaceae; Calamoideae): Misidentified for far too long. Biodiversity Data Journal 7:e37757

Cosiaux A, Gardiner LM, Stauffer FW, Bachman SP, Sonké B, Baker WJ, Couvreur, TLP (2018) Low extinction risk for an important plant resource: Conservation assessments of continental African palms (Arecaceae/Palmae). Biological Conservation 221:323-333

Kamga SM, Niangadouma R, Stauffer FW, Sonké B, Couvreur TLP (2018) Two new species of Raphia. PhytoKeys 111: 17-30

Dauby G, Stévart T, Droissart V, Cosiaux A, Deblauwe V, Simo-Droissart M, Sosef MSM, Lowry II PP, Schatz GE, Gereau RE, Couvreur TLP (2017) ConR: An R package to assist large-scale multispecies preliminary conservation assessments using distribution data. Ecol Evol. 7:11292-11303