Some projects of civil society organisations that address national policies in natural resource management in the country have been selected to benefit from a 500,000-dollar funding (about FCFA 267 million). It is a joint project of the Central African Regional Programme for the Environment (CARPE) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The selection was done on Thursday August 9, 2012 during the sixth steering committee meeting of the CARPE Small Grants Project at the Yaounde Djeuga Palace Hotel. Speaking to journalists during the session, CARPE Regional Programme Manager for Central Africa, Dr Angu Angu Kenneth, said the project focuses on ensuring the sustainable management of the environment.

"We look for good projects that address national policies in natural resource management; reason why we have partners like the World Bank, UNDP, IUCN, WWF, and COMIFAC etc.

We handle climate change, REDD, linking conservation and development, protected areas, sustainable management of forest concessions, land tenure and the environment," he added. National committees, he stressed, select the projects that are later sent to regional committee for the final selection.

Like Dr. Angu Angu, the representative of the COMIFAC Secretariat, Valerie Tchuante Tite, said the project that promotes and builds a constituency for conservation amongst civil society, seeks to foster partnership between landscapes consortia and local NGOs/community- based organisations in the field. It also fills gaps in conservation analytical agenda such as designing suitable mechanisms for providing feedback to local communities on conservation strategies, exchanging field experiences and success stories between and within landscapes and identifying natural resource management policies that require country team advocacy for policy reform or development among others.

"Thanks to this project, the civil society has been increasingly involved in designing national policies. The ongoing review of Cameroon forestry and wildlife laws is fruit of this project. We have also trained actors of civil society organisations in the sustainable management of natural resources," Valerie said.

The project is also implemented in the Central African Republic, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo (Brazzaville) and the Democratic Republic of Congo.