The plan for the development and management of the classified forest of Mount Balam (FCMB) was developed with the support of the NGO Odiae as part of its project “Strengthening the resilience of protected areas in Togo in the face of climate change”.
This project is financed by the European Union (EU) through the Climate Change Support Program (PALCC). It was developed to meet a legal requirement and a need to avoid visual navigation. The process of developing this management plan was participatory, inclusive and
took into account the concerns and expectations of the various stakeholders, including the local populations, local administrative authorities, traditional chiefs, forest administration... The socio-economic diagnosis conducted as part of the development of this management plan shows a strong dependence of the mainly agricultural population on forest resources. This results in an overexploitation of
resources and an anarchic occupation. The forest inventory shows five (06) plant formations: dense dry summit forests, open forests, wooded savannas, wooded savannas on high slopes, shrub savannas and fields and fallows on low slopes. This inventory also shows a diversity of wildlife habitat, the impoverishment of wildlife, which is highly threatened by poaching, bush fires and habitat degradation. Constraints, obstacles, assets and potentialities of an administrative,
legal, social nature and those related to the natural environment and the state of the forest have been identified. These constraints, obstacles, assets and potentialities guided the definition of development objectives. In general, the development of the FCMB is guided by the concern to ensure the restoration, protection and integrated management of its biological resources and its peripheral zone in order to improve its contribution to the local and national economy. Specifically, the development aims to: i) ensure the protection and surveillance of the FCMB, ii) restore the FCMB forest cover through the reforestation of degraded areas, iii) improve the knowledge of the biological resources of the FCMB for better ecological and socio-economic monitoring, iv) valorize the biological and ecotourism resources of the FCMB and its peripheral zone in order to secure and improving the livelihoods of local populations, v) strengthening the functioning of the FCMB management framework
To achieve this, on the basis of land use, the FCMB is divided into two development units. Unit I, with an area of 2447.04 ha, includes dense dry summit forests, open forests, wooded savannas, and wooded savannas on high slopes while Unit II, with an area of 1628.37 ha, is composed of shrubby savannas and fields and fallows on lower slopes. The main action to be carried out in Unit I is protection against all forms of degradation. Unit II will include reforestation and protection operations in order to restore forest cover degraded by agricultural practices. The development of these two units should ensure the restoration and improvement of the components that make up biodiversity. Thus, five (05) programs have been defined: i) protection and surveillance program, ii) forest cover restoration program, iii) ecological research and monitoring program, iv) participatory management and eco-development program, v) administrative and financial management program. For the implementation of this management plan, an institutional framework was proposed including the conservation service, the management committee and the monitoring committees. The role and responsibility of each actor involved in the management of FCMB has been defined. The procedures for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the development plan and its revision have also been defined. Positive
and negative environmental and socio-economic impacts have been identified. For the most part, the negative socio-economic impacts of implementing the land use plan boil down to the restriction of access to resources and the use of space. For this purpose, planned mitigation measures are of an organizational and technical nature sufficiently developed in the various development programs. ix A budget of one billion three hundred fifty-nine million three hundred fifty thousand (1,359,350,000) FCFA will be necessary to implement this development and management plan. This budget can be mobilized through the investment and equipment budget (BIE), the contribution of the municipalities of Blitta1 and Blitta3, the national forest development fund (FNDF), the support of development NGOs and the support of technical and financial partners in particular: the ITTO, the FCPF and financial partners in particular: the ITTO, the FCPF, FEM, the green climate fund, the EU, FAO, UNDP, and the world bank.