Yaounde, Cameroon Africa. (Cameroon News) – Diplomats have been asked to mark their support for the battle that the Ministry of Environment is launching for protection of marine resources which are fast getting depleted in the seas that surround Cameroon.
The Ministry of Environment has arranged a meeting to sensitize diplomats and to call upon them to offer their full support and compliance towards the cause of marine resource protection. The meeting will be convened in Yaounde on Tuesday.
The Minister of Environment and Nature Protection, Hele Pierre has asked all the foreign diplomats based in the country to offer their whole hearted support towards measures that are being directed towards protecting as well as ensuring the long life of the fast depleting mangrove ecosystems of West African countries whose existence in itself in being heavily threatened by ever increasing human intervention and erratic changes in the weather which in turn is leading to such ecosystems as well as the organisms that live within them move into extinction.
Cameroon World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) / World Wildlife Fund Cameroun
While he was inaugurating the sensitization seminar that has been exclusively organized for the foreign diplomats residing in the country titled “Combating Living Resource Depletion and Coastal Area Degradation in the Guinea Current through Ecosystem-based Regional Actions” that will continue for a whole day at Yaounde’s Mont Febe Hotel on Tuesday February 15 , the Minister brought to the notice of the audience that there was a pressing requirement to offer as much of assistance possible to the measures that are being put in place by the 16 Central and West African countries who have largely committed themselves to offering protection and for guaranteeing the long life of the vast marine resources of their countries so that they may be in a position to set aside a huge legacy for the generations across a long future.
“The project seeks an integrated approach to resolving the problem that stretches from Angola to Guinea Bissau,” detailed the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO Resident Representative, Van Rompe. He also revealed that a meeting of stakeholders would be arranged on the pressing concerns in Douala from February 17 to 18th. He said that they would be aiming at allocating resources for the deployment of the action plan and would also be putting in place a forum for regular communication among partners.
It was also found that a prominent initiative among the various measure that have been put in place ever since the project kicked off in 2005 to address the issues at stake, were the implementation of surveys of currently available stocks of marine resources from Angola to Guinea Bissau and the focused efforts deployed by various member states to not just protect but also sustain their fishery resources.
An inventory of habitats and ecosystems that have been depleted was also taken and an all encompassing management plan for such areas has also been set up by the six founding members of the project.
The region for which the project has been put in place in definitely one of the most varied and richest marine waters with marine resources, rare and precious minerals, oil and gas reserves and a vast potential for coastal tourism.
The saddest fact here is that in spite of the world as well as the governments of member states being aware of this huge potential most of it lies untouched waiting to be tapped. But a lot of hurdles come in the form of lagging socio-economic development in the area.
This can be attributed to a number of factors the most common among them being excessive population growth couples with low literacy levels, malnutrition, high incidence of HIV/AIDS, and no or limited human and organizational capability in deploying natural resources.
