By Ntungwe Ngalame Elias, who was among a group of award-winning environmental journalists from Cameroon who were hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation during a week-long UK visit in April as part of their prize. Ntungwe Ngalame Elias, of Eden Newspaper, won the Best Print Report award for an article, “Coping with Climate Change in Yaounde”. The following story was published on the Reuters Foundation AlertNet Service.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AlertNet) - The Cameroon government has initiated a process to integrate local communities in the management of the country's forests and wildlife.
The Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife recently signed agreements with five traditional rulers for planting about 50,000 trees following a three day workshop that discussed issues of fighting climate change by adopting sustainable forest management practices.
Cameroon's efforts to elicit greater community participation in forest management is in accordance with the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), a part of the EU-initiated Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade process signed between Cameroon and the European Union to ensure transparency in forest governance and management, said Grace Mbah, Cameroon's southwest regional delegate of forestry and wildlife.
Worldwide, community participation in forest management has assumed significance with the creation of REDD (Reducing emissions from destruction and degradation), an international effort expected to become a major instrument of emissions reductions post-2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, deforestation and subsequent land-use change occurring in tropical developing countries contributed up to 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in the 1990s.
Enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries - the basis of REDD - started as a global initiative from the United Nation's conference on climate change at Bali in 2007.
The focus has now shifted to national and local levels with more than 40 countries developing national REDD strategies and policies, and hundreds of REDD projects being initiated across the tropics.
ENGAGING FOREST COMMUNITIES
An important component of this strategy has been devising mechanisms to engage forest communities to help conservation practices - adopted with the help of funding from the developed countries – to become more accountable.
Experts also feel that meaningful participation of forest communities will determine whether REDD achieves the desired success.
"Traditional rulers are agents of development and have direct authority and control over the local communities. We are not only custodians of tradition but we also take responsibility to protect and preserve ... bio-diversity," said Fon Chafah Isaac XI, secretary general of the newly created National Association of Traditional Rulers.
Northern Cameroon has suffered most from the loss of its green cover, resulting in advancing of the Sahara Desert, according to local community leaders.
Lake Chad, the largest water body in the region, spread over northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon and northern Chad, has shrunk considerably over the past two decades, posing additional difficulties for agrarian communities living in the region.
All three countries depend on hydro-electricity from a dam on the fast-receding lake.
Traditional leaders participating in the effort said that, besides tree planting, they will work to curb the amount of wood being cut for fuel in their communities.
"Along with planting trees, we have to sensitize the population on the effects of .... burning of waste, the use of wood for cooking and so on," Isaac said. He added that such messages will be disseminated in local languages through community radio and in local group meetings.
Cameroon has 14 million hectares of protected forests and about 17.5 million hectares of commercial and other exploited forests.
Ntungwe Elias Ngalame is an award-winning environmental writer with Cameroon's Eden Group of newspapers.
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