Posted on April, 25 2018

WWF has signed partnership agreements with four civil society organizations in Cameroon to embark on a five-year journey to build sustainable relationship between human beings and nature and enhance rights and access to natural resources for local communities and indigenous people. This is within the framework of a new project christened Leading the Change: Civil Society, Rights and Environment, to be implemented in parts of the South West and East Regions of Cameroon. The project will seek to promote equal participation by local communities in decision making processes related to access and management of natural resources by addressing structural causes of discrimination, incorporating positive discrimination measures for social groups such as women/girls, children/youth, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities.

Capacities of civil society organisations will be built and the latter will work with over 30 community-based organisations (CBOs) including schools to achieve the objectives of the project.

As a prelude to the implementation of the project, WWF organised an inception workshop in the city of Limbe from April 23 to 26, with partners, to establish a common vision and understanding on what the project intends to achieve. Speaking during the workshop, WWF Cameroon Country Director, Dr. Hanson Njiforti underscored the need to build capacities of civil society organizations so they can have greater autonomy and better represent the local communities they support. “This project is keen on ensuring that civil society organizations (CSOs) and CBOs participation in different environmental and conservation aspects in Cameroon is enhanced,” Dr. Njiforti said. “It also entails support to youth and indigenous people access and rights to natural resources,” he added. “There are a lot of environmental issues to be addressed and WWF cannot do it alone. We have to identify areas where we can provide financial and technical support to the local civil society organizations we shall be working with in the next five year,” he said.

“We shall develop livelihood component strongly and support local and indigenous communities to participate in natural resource management,” said Martin Etone, Coordinator of Community Action for Development (CAD), one of the four local civil society organizations that signed partnership with WWF to implement the project. “We have to make sure our voices as CSOs are heard in addressing policy issues and decision making at the national level,” he said.

For John Takang, Founder and Executive Director of Environmental Governance Institute (EGI), another local CSO implementing the project, the MoU signed with WWF is a build up to a previous edition signed four years ago. “In the first phase we focused on building our capacities to function normally as an NGO. With this new phase, we shall scale that up especially on how communities benefit from the work that we do,” he said. “We shall be working with smallholder farmers of oil palm plantations we had grouped into cooperatives,” he said.

The leading change project also includes the initiation of a REDD+ mechanism in the South West Region and education at different levels in the society to raise awareness on climate issues and resilience. The project will use the inclusive approaches of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and continue to collaborate with schools to reach out to the youth.