Wanted: Full Inclusion of CSOs in Climate Change Mitigation
The control that climate wields over Earth is not an issue for dispute. Good climate influences man’s activities such as agriculture, forestry, water resources, industry, commerce, transportation, construction, fishing, and many other activities much in the same way as bad climate does. And this, climate does at random. Unfavorable conditions of climate affect man regardless of status or location and they can be costly, if not extremely dangerous. Adverse climatic conditions cause both short and long-term damage to human lives, environment and property.
Over the past decades, man has grappled with the adverse effects of changing climatic conditions after having put up with the damaging effects of industrial pollution at the turn of the Industrial Revolution. Human lives have been lost in severe storms, tornados, hurricanes and wild fires. The cumulative effects of undesirable climate change have caused extreme variations in weather conditions, leading to discontinuous rainfall, crop failures and shortages in water supplies. There is, therefore, great motivation to tone down climate change and stem the escalation of its effects on humanity and the environment.
Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, through the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, the Bali (Indonesia) Action Plan in 2007, the Copenhagen Agreement to Cancun in 2010 and the Durban Platform, only elitist stakeholders seem to have been discussing climate change, ignoring those perhaps most affected by the effects of climate change – the grassroots populations. The importance, therefore, of pressing forward with the necessary efforts to fight climate change by developing effective counter-measures is now being seen by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) as requiring the full inclusion of local stakeholders. It is in this light that Cameroonian CSOs have been discussing and advocating for their full involvement in the implementation of REDD+ policies in the fight against climate change.
The CSOs argue, perhaps rightly so, that most national policies on climate change mitigation are developed from their proposals so they should naturally be involved in their implementation. This would help to penetrate sufficiently the problem of climate change. It would also enhance the need to harness more minds to assume a collective responsibility for taking the lead in developing a well-rounded strategy related to local realities of climate change rather than waiting for prescriptions from above.
Ahead of the Conference of Paris (COP 21- 2015) to be held in Paris in December 2015, the Cameroonian CSOs hope to have their voices heard and their opinions on climate change considered beyond paper work, so as to support each other with their experience and capabilities in order to participate effectively in the fight against climate change.
