Cameroon and other African countries receive satellite images from France to monitor its forest and environment in order to better combat the phenomenon of climate change.

The revelation was made last October 22 at the Yaoundé Hotel Franco during the official opening ceremony of a seminar on the observation by satellite in Central and West Africa of carbon forest, research on national strategies of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

Organized by the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in collaboration with the government of France, the seminar threw more light on measures taken to ameliorate access to satellite images as well as reinforcing the capacity of national technical teams and the implementation of research projects applied in the domain of forest monitoring.

Briefing reporters on the objective of the seminar, the Minister of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development, Hele Pierre said “It is to facilitate exchange of experience between experts, researchers, lecturers and other institutions that use satellite images to monitor forest and environment as a means to fighting against the phenomenon of climate change.

Now we have what is known as Authority National license given to us by France. Thanks to this satellite we have images from our forest from Adamawa right down to the South Region thereby enabling Cameroon to better tackle the problem of climate change.”

In a chat with the press during the occasion, French Ambassador to Cameroon H.E Christine Robichon explained that “This seminar today is about keeping the forest for it to contribute in the fight against climate change. You know that the future of our planate is threatened by climate change and to prepare a safe world for the coming generation, we need to take care of our planet.

This is an international responsibility. Forest contributes in reducing effects of climate change but degradation, deforestation include the risk of climate change. Thus there is the need to keep the forest alive. A mechanism was put in place during a conference in Mexico to put funds at the disposal of countries that protect their forest. Forest can not only be protected by laws because quite often these laws are not implemented unfortunately.

This workshop is discussing on two programmes funded by France in order to provide for the countries of the Central African Region some satellite pictures showing the stages of the state of the forest at different dates from last century to present year so that the country can evaluate the path covered. With this it is easier to measure whether the forest today is larger than what it was 20 years ago or smaller etc.”