With urban populations worldwide expected to witness substantial growth over the next decades, pressure on urban land and resources is projected to increase in response. For policy-makers to adequately meet the challenges brought about by changes in the dynamics of urban areas, it is important to clearly identify and communicate their causes. Floods in Douala (the most densely populated city in the central African sub-region), are being associated chiefly with changing rainfall patterns, resulting from climate change in major policy circles. We investigate this contention using statistical analysis of daily rainfall time-series data covering the period 1951À2008, and tools of geographic information systems. Using attributes such as rainfall anomalies, trends in the rainfall time series, daily rainfall maxima and rainfall intensityÀdurationÀfrequency, we find no explanation for the attribution of an increase in the occurrences and severity of floods to changing rainfall patterns. The culprit seems to be the massive increase in the population of Douala, in association with poor planning and investment in the city's infrastructure. These demographic changes and poor planning have occurred within a physical geography setting that is conducive for the inducement of floods. Failed urban planning in Cameroon since independence set the city up for a flood-prone land colonization. This today translates to a situation in which large portions of the city's surface area and the populations they harbor are vulnerable to the city's habitual annual floods. While climate change stands to render the city even more vulnerable to floods, there is no evidence that current floods can be attributed to the changes in patterns of rainfall being reported in policy and news domains.
Anticipating seasonal and shorter time scale dynamics to farming practices is primordial for indigenous farmers’ resilience under extreme environmental conditions, where climate change is a menace to agro-hydro-ecological systems. This paper assesses the effectiveness of indigenous farmers’ knowledge and aptitude to read weather signs for informed decisions on their daily and seasonal activities. Such climate-proof development is anchored on indigenous people’s knowledge and perceptions in circumstances where the dearth of scientific evidence or information exists as in Cameroon. The study is based on eight focus group discussions and a survey of 597 farming households in seven agro-ecological basins on the Bui Plateau of the Bamenda Highlands. The results indicate that indigenous smallholder farmers value their ability to accurately observe and anticipate local conditions in various ways to serve their local realities more aptly than outside forecasts. Such local knowledge should thus exercise a complementary role weave in a local climate information understanding system that replicates ecological variability.
Recent environmentalism in Cameroon and forest reserve creation has been varied in implementation and management between community and national stakeholders and policies. Good national intents for hot spot conservation saw the 1953 creation of the Bafut-Ngemba production forest reserve on the Bamenda Highlands, where today's accelerated urbanization and development has largely engulfed. Pressure on the forest reserve resources has thwarted its spatio-temporal natural tree cover climax. The study uses a field survey and secondary data treatment methodology to probe how communities at the reserve fringe have responded to unmet natural wood demands by pushing in eucalyptus tree plantations to result in forest reserve reversal. Varied income-driven circumstances generated an overwhelming embrace of a eucalyptus culture swallowing up the natural trees. A thirty-year evaluation of the tree cover revealed a near 40% loss the reserve trees while eucalyptus laden-farmland have been gained ascendancy. This ecological colonization scramble was timid in the 1980s, then rapid in the 1990s and then exponential by 2018. There is a direct relationship between this spatial gains from the eucalyptus and population growth demand trends. The study therefore opts for a quick revisit of the initial forest reserve philosophy that is now being diluted in this eucalyptus embrace. These eucalyptus trees are ecological terrorists that should never be permitted to terrorize production forest reserves.
In Cameroonian cities, floods from solid pollutant barriers constitute environmental hazards of new distinct dimension, nature and characteristics. This study examines geographical settings provoking floods in cities and the way it affects the population. It suggests appropriate policy mitigation options. Primary and secondary data collected through fieldwork and documentary sources were treated. Findings show that national and local rules and legislation are weakly applied exposing urban natural floodway to varied forms of human colonisation activities. These urban stream flood ways that ought to be downstream water evacuation role players reversed into inhabited neighbourhoods of diverted water. Human activities and infrastructural urban inputs that unconsciously imposed directional dictates unto urban stream flow have become self-made victims of wicked egocentrism over urban stream channels. As nature is permanently in a state of dynamic re-equilibration the urban stream waters have in retaliation taught its trouble givers a disproportionately unequal negative response in enormous fatalities for the humans who dare to resist its floods and abandonment for those who have been repeatedly humbled by its floods. The response from this no man's land of aborted human conquest requires comprehensive and multidimensional environmental management in stream-bordered urban built.
Rural development stakeholder support is an essential strategy for the initiation, operation, and implementation of sustainable of development interventions, especially in geographically-biased highland regions, characterised by diverse stakeholder development interests. This paper sought to analyze the interaction of rural development stakeholders and the challenges linked to the implementation of sustainable rural development initiatives in the Kom Highlands of Cameroon. Primary data was obtained through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The data was analysed using content analysis, while a spatial picture, based on slope gradient was presented. Results showed that rural development is strongly determined by slope gradients of this highland community, with an array of diverse rural development experts (organizations, local councils, government ministries and development-oriented non-governmental organizations) operating mainly with local communities and organizations. The use of stakeholder theory thus appeared significant in understanding stakeholders’ goals for implementing of sustainable rural development.
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