The increasing need for Cameroonian citizens to participate in decisions leading to the exploitation of their land and
environmental resources by national and multi-national companies has been given a thrust at a five-day workshop that held September 1-5, 2015 in Kribi, South Region. The workshop organized by the Centre for Environmental Development (CED) assembled journalists, human rights activists, CSO and NGO leaders who were drilled to actively participate in the management of natural resources, land and the environment in the Congo Basin.
By Anu Nkeze Paul
The project financed by the European Union will run simultaneously for three years in four Central African countries – Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo and . It is aimed at reuniting environmental, human rights activists and journalists to justly defend land and environmental resources and support sustainable exploitation. It will help to propose appropriate land and environmental resources participatory management that will avoid conflicts, destruction and sustain sustainable exploitation, and will empower the different stakeholders to investigate abusive land practices, and ensure the respect of land and environment laws.
The training workshop was aimed at enhancing participatory approach as concerns protection and defence of land and environmental rights while stemming the issuance of exploitation permits by government to foreign firms and investors without considering the population’s livelihoods concerns.
The workshop sought to address a number of issues like how to curb environmental degradation, investigate projects with negative environmental consequences, create a network in Cameroon to protect land, natural resources and the environment. With this knowledge, the workshop participants are expected to champion the fight against unsustainable exploitation of natural resources in Cameroon, which is endowed with numerous prized fertile agro-industrial and plantation lands, forests, wildlife, minerals, and petroleum deposits.
According to reports, the Cameroon government is currently issuing permits for exploitation of natural resources, at the detriment of the huge rural population that depends on these resources for daily livelihood. The unsustainable tapping of these resources poses a potential risk and violation of the rights of those who are supposed to share the benefits derived from the exploitation the said resources. Reliable information indicates that even when the indigenous people protest these projects nobody pays attention to their grievances.
Then again, restrictions and claims of government ownership of all land and natural resources have a negative impact on the local population’s living standards.
As inscribed in the International Law, a people surrounded by natural resources must have a say and percentage before it exploitation.
The project, therefore, intends to stop the rampant, abusive and illegal exploitation of communities’ resources for individual benefits and institute a participatory exploitation management approach.
Presenting project to 35 participants drawn from all the regions of the country, Executive Director of CED, Samuel Nguiffo, urged all to remain vigilant to any irrational exploitation of land and environmental resources in the country.
He warned of imminent dangers of the continued ceding of the people’s land resources to multi-nationals with the excuse for economic growth and employment.
The CED CEO added that if participatory management is instituted and good laws put in place, the state and the population could derive much greater benefits from land and environmental resources.
He reiterated that the Cameroon is very rich in natural resources but needs to better management of same.
For his part, the project coordinator, Apollin Koagne, said, “this is the first time Cameroon is benefitting from such an important project to help protect land and environmental resources for the good of all.
Koagne called for everyone to put all hands on deck for the success of the project and sustainable exploitation and development of the country’s natural resources.
The workshop rounded up with a field visits to Mboro Camp recently displaced by the Kribi deep seaport project.
