1. Introduction
Climate change is a crucial issue of our era (Annan, 2007) and is expected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts on resource limited countries such as Cameroon. In particular, small-scale farmers depending on available natural resources as well as on traditional farm practices are more affected. Like elsewhere, local farmers' perceptions of climate change and their strategies to mitigate its impacts are based on indigenous knowledge and their own experiences (Li et al., 2003).
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2010) climate change refers to the statistically significant variations that persist for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Basically, climate change …show more content…
Due to its agro-ecological diversity, Cameroon has great potentials for agricultural production. Until the late 80s, Cameroon was considered self-sufficient in agricultural production and played a role of food garret for its neighbouring countries, thus referred to as “Africa in miniature”. Since early 90s, Cameroon began spending billions of francs CFA to import significant quantities of food items such as rice, maize, onion, tomatoes, milk and poultry even though it has a clear comparative advantage in producing them. This has been very worrisome as it undermines local production potentials and pushes many producers out of the production chain as a result of unfair competition, rather than assessing and identifying strategies to outsmart various challenges e.g. climate …show more content…
Cameroon as a signatory to the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol on climate change has taken some actions geared towards addressing climate change at national level. For example, a set of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) was submitted to UNFCCC in 2010 in addition to an Emissions Readiness Preparation Plan (REDD RPP) and a National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) to prepare for future climate change financing (UNFCCC, 2010). Also a clear national strategy on climate change adaptation and mitigation and a body responsible for the implementation of the actions contained in the strategy while recognizing the need for multi-sector approach is yet to be developed. A major observation in this strategy elaboration process is that the concerns, interests and experiences of local communities who are most exposed to the impacts of climate change are not strongly considered in these initial policy elaboration
Climate change is a crucial issue of our era (Annan, 2007) and is expected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts on resource limited countries such as Cameroon. In particular, small-scale farmers depending on available natural resources as well as on traditional farm practices are more affected. Like elsewhere, local farmers' perceptions of climate change and their strategies to mitigate its impacts are based on indigenous knowledge and their own experiences (Li et al., 2003).
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2010) climate change refers to the statistically significant variations that persist for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Basically, climate change …show more content…
Due to its agro-ecological diversity, Cameroon has great potentials for agricultural production. Until the late 80s, Cameroon was considered self-sufficient in agricultural production and played a role of food garret for its neighbouring countries, thus referred to as “Africa in miniature”. Since early 90s, Cameroon began spending billions of francs CFA to import significant quantities of food items such as rice, maize, onion, tomatoes, milk and poultry even though it has a clear comparative advantage in producing them. This has been very worrisome as it undermines local production potentials and pushes many producers out of the production chain as a result of unfair competition, rather than assessing and identifying strategies to outsmart various challenges e.g. climate …show more content…
Cameroon as a signatory to the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol on climate change has taken some actions geared towards addressing climate change at national level. For example, a set of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) was submitted to UNFCCC in 2010 in addition to an Emissions Readiness Preparation Plan (REDD RPP) and a National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) to prepare for future climate change financing (UNFCCC, 2010). Also a clear national strategy on climate change adaptation and mitigation and a body responsible for the implementation of the actions contained in the strategy while recognizing the need for multi-sector approach is yet to be developed. A major observation in this strategy elaboration process is that the concerns, interests and experiences of local communities who are most exposed to the impacts of climate change are not strongly considered in these initial policy elaboration