Local councils in Cameroon are joining to fight climate change by increasing grassroots participation and government accountability
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AlertNet) - Local councils in Cameroon are seizing the initiative in the fight against climate change with a new network to increase grassroots participation and government accountability on climate policy.
The Cameroon Councils Against Climate Change Network aims to give Cameroon’s councils a collective voice in decisions about the environment that affect them, according to Marie Ahidjo, mayor of Garoua 11 council and the network’s first president.
Earlier, “decisions taken by the government to fight against climate change did not take into consideration the environmental realities of the different council areas and the ignorance of the mostly illiterate farming population in the local communities, (and) thus did not yield the expected results,” Ahidjo said.
In many of its decisions, she said, the government has not done enough to respect principles of environmental democracy such as access to information, public participation and access to justice.
The secretary-general of Cameroon’s Ministry of the Environment, Patrick Akwa, has saluted the creation of the network at a time when the government is implementing a decentralization programme.
Akwa said that the network will not only enable local councils to exchange ideas and experiences but provide them the clout to spur government into making decisions on climate change that adequately address local needs.
“The government is ready to work in tandem with the local communities and provide them the necessary technical and material support,” he said.
The emerging network was inspired by a climate change sensitization road show organized by the British High Commission to Cameroon in August 2010. The program visited a number of local councils in areas where the impact of climate change has been especially severe.
The network is supported by the British High Commission and the Washington-based Bioresources Development Conservation Programme (BDCP) as part of an initiative to promote improved environmental governance and a more effective fight against climate change.
“This network will permit the different local councils to better communicate and exchange accurate climate data,” said local BDCP coordinator Emmanuel Nganshi. He emphasized that effective participation of local communities in environmental management decisions is essential for effective results.
The effects of climate change on agriculture are a particular concern for many of the councils in the new network. Agriculture remains the economic backbone of many areas of Cameroon, but its contribution to the country’s GDP has fallen from more than 70 percent in the 1980s to just 31 percent today, according to statistics from the Ministry of Environment.
Environmental experts see a pattern of change that is familiar from other countries in the region.
“Water supply variability, soil degradation (and) recurring droughts have been experienced in the northern parts of Cameroon as well as in countries like Chad, Niger, northern Nigeria and Mali,” said Zachee Nzohngandembou, coordinator of the Center for the Environment and Rural Transformation, an environmental non-profit based in Limbe.
Climate change and other environmental problems have forced large regions of marginal agriculture out of production, exacerbating hunger and playing a role in incidents of civil strife such as those in Cameroon in February 2008 and northern Nigeria in 2010, he said.
Network members are beginning to strategize about how they can leverage their collective power to attract funding from development partners for climate-oriented projects.
“We will come up with some projects that will permit us [to] fight the effects of climate change, like tree planting, water catchment building, good drainage systems (and) construction of all-season roads,” said Clement Wanki Atanga, mayor of Nkambe council.
The Limbe 1, Nkambe, Garoua 11, Santa, Nanga-Eboko, Idenau, Kaele and Kribi councils are the inaugural members of the network, and there are hopes that the idea will spread to other council areas across the country.
Daniel Matute, mayor of the coastal Limbe 1 council, is already looking ahead.
“We are planning to bring in all the different local councils in the ten regions of the country, because this network will play a great role in the fight against the abuse of the environment,” he said. The network’s creation, he said, “will greatly motivate us (to) continuously sensitize the population on the need for good environmental practices.”
Elias Ntungwe Ngalame is an award-winning environmental writer with Cameroon's Eden Group of newspapers.
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