Climate Change!

Southwest CSOs Call For Joint Action

Climate Change: It is a phrase the people of Planet Earth have a lot of trouble with, and justifiably so. Earth’s climate condition is grim. And the time for climate change issues to be discussed only at scientific roundtables is past. Such elitist symposiums are not good enough now.

By Azore Opio

Climate change is increasingly demanding more voices, and cross-cutting contributions and interventions. The extreme manners that Earth’s climate has acquired challenges everything that man ever thought he knew about managing the climatic conditions of his mother planet. Most fundamentally, the times demand that all deal proactively with the climatic chaos; not look at the chaotic weather patterns per se as a preserve of specialists, but as a problem to be gotten around collectively. In sum, the hard facts of climate change have to be faced by anyone and everyone concerned. That is why concerned civil society organisations (CSOs) in the Southwest Region of Cameroon erected a drawing board on which they have been brainstorming on how to throw in their weight behind the fight against climate change. Over and above this climate change urgency is the need for the voices of those most affected – African nations – but contribute least towards warming the Earth beyond reasonable temperatures, to be heard.

On November 3, 2015 in Kumba, a range of CSOs hatched out a position statement on climate change, which they channelled to Yaounde and expected it to be factored into President’s Biya speech at the COP 21 in Paris, France.

Very much aware of the negative impacts of climate change in the Southwest Region, the CSOs resolved that all the stakeholders of the Region – senators, MPs, mayors, chiefs, CSOs, external and internal elites – should collaborate with the administration and technical services to tackle global warming.

The CSOs recommended that a Regional Awareness Raising/Communication Strategy be established to target schools, rural-urban centres, farmers, councils, etc., but that any communication be put in ENGLISH.

To bolster land and forest tenure, the government should put in place “a land use plan that clearly simplifies tenure issues in order to facilitate the implementation of REDD+ projects.”

The same goes for indigenous people and local communities who depend overwhelmingly on forests, grassland and land for their livelihoods, whose the status should be recognised in their respective rights within the REDD + processes.

Amongst other things, the CSOs recommended capacity building of local communities, councils and CSOs; institution of a regional quota system for funding CSOs activities; giving equal opportunities to women, youth and vulnerable groups and an adequate benefit-sharing mechanism.

“We want enough information on climate change to be factored into rural development strategies, especially women’s activities,” said Anu Gospel, Gender Community Action Officer of Nkong Hill Top Association for Development (NADEV). “We hope that the resolutions we have taken will be implemented.”

Reiterating Gospel, GPS/Socio-economic Technician volunteer at the Southwest Regional Delegation of Forestry and Wildlife, Njiwung Nkemangong Anita, stressed that all age groups and sexes should be represented and communication should be circulated in the English language for the benefit of Cameroon Anglophones.

Takang John Manyitabot, Executive Director of Environmental Governance Institute (EGI), said the CSOs had hatched out issues that affect the Southwest Region and now would like to have an Awareness Creation and Communication Strategy to enlarge the scope of who knows what about climate change and how to do what about it.

The Kumba workshop could be crucial for the fight against climate change in the Southwest Region; “If we continue to work together, we will achieve a lot. We need the government and government needs us. This workshop is to ignite us into a process of cooperation. We work in different areas, so there is need for us to converge at the national level,” said Moses Tabe Achuo, CEO of Food and Rural Development (FORUDEF), under whose auspices the workshop was organized.