1 Legal vs. certified timber: preliminary impacts of forest certification in Cameroon Paolo Omar Cerutti (Corresponding author) Center for International Forestry Research, Yaoundé, Cameroon p.cerutti@cgiar.org ; Phone +237 22227449; Fax +237 22227450 and Crawford School of Economics and Government The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Luca Tacconi Crawford School of Economics and Government The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia luca.tacconi@anu.edu.au Robert Nasi Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia r.nasi@cgiar.org Guillaume Lescuyer Center for International Forestry Research, Yaoundé, Cameroon g.lescuyer@cgiar.org Abstract The concept of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) has a pivotal role for both the Cameroonian legal framework and market-based instruments such as forest certification. We assess the different impacts on timber harvesting of the forest legal framework as compared to the adoption of forest certification, on the ten Forest Management Unit (FMUs) that had received a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification by mid-2009, and discuss some differences between legal and *Manuscript Cerutti et al. - Accepted Nov 2010, Forest Policy and Economics