The document endorsed Thursday March 6 will be submitted to CBD latest next March 31.

The government of Cameroon has endorsed the fifth report on the state of its biodiversity which will be submitted to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) by March 31 in accordance with the prescriptions of the 1992 convention to which Cameroon is signatory.

The report was examined and endorsed in a workshop on Thursday March 6 chaired by the Secretary General in the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development (MINEPDED), Akwa Patrick Kum Bong. The objective of the convention is for signatories to conserve their biological resources, to use them in a sustainable manner and to ensure that benefits accruing from the resources are shared equitably.

Speaking during the opening ceremony, the SG said systemically submitting the report as the regulation requires is testimony to government’s willingness to make sustainable biodiversity management part and parcel of its growth vision. The report, he said, evaluates the extent to which each country has been able to meet up with conservation objectives at the national level.

According to the Technical Adviser N°1 in MINEPDED, Prudence Tangham Galega, who is also the National Focal Point for Biodiversity Conservation in the country, Cameroon has been a very faithful party to the convention and has at regular intervals since 2004 prepared its national report and submitted on time.

The document to be sent to CBD, Mrs. Galega said, consists of three key parts: The state of biodiversity in the country (what exists in terms of species), the major threats hanging on the country’s biodiversity and the major cause which she said is degradation.

“This is a threat to humanity because if our key production sectors are dependent on biodiversity, threat to biodiversity would mean threat to the resources on which those sectors depend, threat to the communities that depend on biodiversity for their wellbeing and of course threat to the nation’s development,” she observed.