Wither The Green Revolution?

The Green Revolution came under the reign of President Amhadou Ahidjo to revolutionalise the agricultural system. It yielded a lot of fruit such that Cameroon till today is the bread basket in the central African sub-region.

By Bertrand Shancho Ndimuh

President Ahidjo also created Green Sahel to salvage the threatening advancement of the desert by turning it into a green vegetation area and making the area, which was always dry, have shade as well as conserve soil moisture.

The project provided opportunity for trees in the South to be transported to the North, which was totally Savannah. It was such that during long vacations, children of primary and secondary schools were transported by aircraft each of them with a seedling and when dropped in the North, they individually dug a hole and planted the seedlings. This too is still being felt today. The North has the highest number of mango variety, thanks to Green Sahel.

This process has continued over the years and a few years ago government launched Operation Tree Planting in the North were thousands of trees were planted, and today government, through the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF), is working more with local councils to ensure the planting of trees in respective municipalities. There is also the urban forestry project, the operationalisation of the transformation sector of MINFOF, another project is in Mbalmayo to train foresters on the transformation of forestry projects into various end projects. In addition, there is the Banking Fund for the Protection of Forestry Sector and the Environment (PECA) to support environmental protection and forestry issues.

There have equally been an increasing effort in the creation of national parks with the South West Region having parks to conserve fauna and flora and the country’s green vegetation and the habitats of wildlife some of which are increasingly becoming endangered; the Mt. Cameroon National Park, the Bakossi National Park, the Takamanda Forest Reserve, which has now been converted into a national park, the Korup National Park, which has been extended into the Korup Ndongore National Park. These are strategies to expand the protection of wildlife as well as their habitats

Timber Exploitation

An account of Southern Cameroons timber crop beginning at the mouth of the Bimbia River included a full range of forest types with the best mangrove swamp around and a great mass of tropical rainforest with a variety of woods considered first-class timber; obeche, mahoganies, iroko, mansonia, abura and ilomba.

During the 1930s and 40s, timber exploitation was a reserve for French companies on the eastern borders of Kumba Division. Tiko to Kumba was heavily forested with Saplewood, Khaya, Iroko, Mahogany and Obeche. French companies and later CDC, Coast Timber (Cameroon) Ltd, and Brandler and Rylke (Cameroon) Ltd were the main timber exploiters. By 1959, timber export had risen to 100,000 tons from under 2,000 tons in 1955/56. Logs were transported by river and railway to Douala in French Cameroons. At the peak of production around 1952/53, about a million cubic feet of mercantile timber a year were being won from the forests.

Immediately after reunification, wood exploited was exported to neighbouring countries, Asia and the Middle East. Cameroon has done a lot in this domain as up to 70% of the wood exploited is now processed in the country with only about 30% exported raw, which was not the case before. It has created lots of employment for the nationals.

A lot of projects were established after reunification. In the Far North there was SENADEPOR and ONAREP. They were established in such a way that while timber was being exploited, one took care of the exploitation while another took care of the replanting of trees and ensuring that they grow to maturity.

Later on, the two departments failed because of lack of money and were merged into SENADEPOR which started doing the work of both departments and also failed because of lack of funding. It was then metamorphosed to ANAFOR to take care of nurseries and transplanting. ANAFOR also is not doing a lot because of lack of funding. 

Dr. Nkatoh Athanasius, Head of Department, Environmental Sciences, University of Buea, recommends that SENADEPO and ONAREP be reinstated so that as timber is being harvested, replanting is carried out simultaneously.

“This should be such that once one tree is cut down, about 20 to 25 new ones are planted so that irrespective of what happens at least five or 10 of the trees will survive to add to the stock of existing trees. In the next 100 years children would be harvesting trees that we of this era must have planted without necessarily going to the wild,” Dr. Nkatoh told The Green Vision.

He adds, “We don’t see trucks with seedlings moving toward areas of exploitation for planting but we see more trucks with logs from the forest. In any case with the effort the government is putting in place, I think that 50% to 60% of our natural resources within the next 50 years will be totally protected because a lot of training schools are emanating, we see environmental education in primary and secondary school curricula and lots of sensitization, including the Environmental Impact Assessment law that is being implemented rigorously and lots of national parks being created alongside reforestation projects.”

The Botanic Garden

The Botanic Garden came into being as far back as the German colonial era as the Germans set up nurseries for exhaustive species of plants that they wanted to introduce into their colonies, which Cameroon happened to be one.

When France and Britain took over, they converted this garden into a bank for the introduction of new plant species around the country. It was later used after Reunification as a place to conserve plant species of Cameroon’s natural origin and the subsequent establishment of the Herbarium. Later on, the garden dwindled due to lack of funds. But in 1990, one British organisation came on board with a project which rehabilitated the identity of the garden and this lasted for 12 years with funding from the British and German governments. When they left around 2002, the garden dwindled again and was handed over to MINFOF that has been managing the garden up to this moment with a conservator at the helm with funding from the government.

Weather Stations

In 1953, eight years before reunification, the meteorological services of the government of Southern Cameroons had set up synoptic reporting stations at Tiko and Mamfe. There were climatologicals at Kumba, Santa, Bambui and Mubi. Eleven rainfall stations were opened in 1953 bringing to total 81; 25 in Cameroons, 36 in Bamenda Province, 1 in Benue, 5 in Adamawa and 14 in Dikwa.

Today, apart from a few weather stations mostly found in agro-industrial centres like Pamol, CDC, where experts have been able to maintain the stations from time immemorial, albeit with some missing data, most of the weather stations that were placed around the country went into disrepair due to lack of funding for the meteorological department to follow weather collection, pay transport fares, keep somebody there to monitor, pay salaries, etc. Thus, most of the weather stations were left to fallow and were eventually discarded. This accounts for the disjointed climatic data about the country; because the weather stations don’t have staff, and data has not been collected for 20 or 30 years.

This department could be reinforced to ensure that we have consistent and accurate data. It helps us in better adapting to climate change and monitoring our effort in the fight against it. I we don’t have these data, we may not be able to adapt because we may be building adaptation strategy when weather is against it.

The Environment Equation

Fifty years down the lane the Cameroon government has done quite a lot. The Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife and that of Environment, Protection of Nature and Sustainable Development, were not in existence at the time of reunification. There was only the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Forestry was only a small directorate under this ministry and that explains why most of the capacity building work right up to the 70s was focused on agriculture because those who headed that ministry were agriculturally oriented. As time went on, issues about forestry and environmental management came on board.

A number of international conventions have also been signed in this regard. For example, at the Earth Summit at Rio de Genera, 1982, environmental issues and the sustainable management of natural resources came on board and this made it incumbent on the government to implement the Agenda 21, which urged her to give attention to forestry and environmental issues because biological resources were dwindling around the world.

After Rio, it was evident to the government that she needed to bring forestry and environmental issues on top of the table instead of just hiding them under the Ministry of Agriculture. It is against this backdrop that government created the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Under this ministry, forestry issues were able to come to the limelight but environmental issues were still hidden. Government again, following other international conventions like the International Convention on Climate Change and the global call for the fight against climate change, coupled with the need for a mechanism to either curb the emission of gases, deforestation either from industrial activities or from individuals to protect the ozone layer, went further to create the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection.

This ministry had enormous challenges because it had no portfolio as most workers were forestry-oriented but the pioneer Minister, Hele Pierre, was able to develop a road map with one of the major achievements being the putting in place of an Impact Assessment Guide in the country; this was never the case. Today, the exploitation of the mining and petroleum sector is guided partly by environmental impact assessment activities.

To sustainably manage the natural resources of the country, about a year or two ago the Ministry of Environment, Protection of Nature and Sustainable Development was created.