Officials of the Central and Decentralised services of the Ministry of Environment, Protection of Nature and Sustainable Development (MINEPDED) have been challenged to work extra hard in order to meet up with the 2016 goals of their priority actions.

The Minister of Environment, Pierre Hele, made the call on January 11, 2016, in Yaounde during a conference placed under the theme: “More Commitment for a Healthy Environment and the Sustainable Development of Cameroon.”

Hele Pierre told his collaborators that the theme was chosen based on MINEPDED’s missions and enlightenment made by President Biya during his December 31, 2015 end-of-year message to the nation.

The Minister said in addition to their already known action programmes, would be added recommendations and results of work of the UN General Assembly of September 23, 2015 as well as those from the conference of parties on the fight against desertification and COP21 on climate change.

He recalled that 193 leaders from across the world during the UN General Assembly of September 25, 2015 engaged to attain 17 global objectives with three main targets being the eradication of extreme poverty; fight against inequalities and injustice as well as tackling the problem of climate change.
Concerning the UN COP12 that held in Ankara in October 2015 on the fight against desertification, the new goal is calling for a complete reversal of processes leading to soil degradation.

Revisiting the Paris Climate Change summit of December 2015, the Minister recalled Cameroon’s engagement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent by 2035 with the help of the international community.

Hele said for this to be done, seven orientations with 47 actions in the agriculture-fishery-animal husbandry-forest as well as in the energy-waste management sectors have been retained.

He added that the Paris Climate Change Agreement offers funding of US 100 billion dollars to Third World countries from 2020; efforts to save Lake Chad; funding of electrification in Africa, amongst others.

“We have to exploit these opportunities to fund our projects in the different domains,” Hele said.

He promised that the fight against non-biodegradable plastic bags would persist.

Meanwhile, presenting the balance sheet of 2015, the Secretary General in MINEPDED, Akwa Patrick Kum Bong, said 87 tons of plastic packaging was seized in compliance with the MINEPDED and Trade Ministry joint order of 2012 regulating the manufacture, importation and marketing of non-biodegradable plastics.

He saw the drop in the figure from 343 tons seized in 2014 as progress in their fight against the banned plastics.

The MINEPDED Scribe also disclosed that in 2015, over FCFA 135.5 million, representing fines imposed on environmental offenders, was collected.

“It should be noted that this amount has dropped by FCFA 11.5 million compared to the amount collected in 2014. We are determined not to relent our efforts to ensure that the rules to assure a healthier environment are respected,” Kum Bong noted.

Other areas of Kum Bong’s report for 2015 centred on what the Ministry did in the domain of the fight against desertification and climate change; the sustainable management of biodiversity; the fight against pollution, nuisance and dangerous chemicals; and governance and institutional support to the environment, protection of nature and sustainable development sub-sector.

Admitting that the achievements were recorded in the midst of difficulties, the Secretary General outlined some of the problems to include: insufficiency and obsolescence of computer equipment; limited access to the internet network in the central and external services and ageing and wear out of field vehicles due to overuse.

Others are inadequate office space for delegations still to be constructed; the slow response of some officials to instructions of hierarchy and insufficient financial resources to meet up with various missions.