WWF Cameroon working towards Leading Change, Civil Society Rights and Environment

WWF Cameroon has been implementing a Civil Society Project with funding from Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) through WWF Sweden, which was built on the 2014-2016 and with a transitional year, 2017. Implemented in the South West, Littoral, and East Regions of Cameroon, the project focused on developing the capacity of CSOs (NGOs, CBOs and their coalitions) to design, implement and evaluate projects and attract funding, in order to fully assume the role of stewards of nature and stand as a voice to influence change.

The main axes of intervention were protected area management, livelihoods (green enterprise development), business and industries, education for sustainable development (ESD), Baka child education and youth empowerment. Throughout the project span, it took consideration the human rights-based approach, aid effectiveness principles, partnership, gender and results-based management were some of the strategies mainstreamed in all the facets of the implementation of the project.

Having completed the first three years of the project implementation (2014-2016) and almost towards the end into the transitional year of 2017, some critical achievements have been recorded in the areas of CSOs influencing policy dialogues on the management of Natural Resources, CSO institutional capacity strengthening, facilitating community access and sustainable use of Natural Resources Natural Resources to begin optimizing benefits.  These and many other achievements, including key lessons, need to be up scaled to showcase more productive results with greater innovative actions that focus more on people, in this new SIDA application for the next 5-year programme, 2018-2022, captioned Leading change, Civil Society Rights and Environment.

The next phase of the project -2018-2022, will lay emphasis on the socio-economic conditions and state of civil society, an exhaustive Stakeholder analysis, a Power analysis that will include a variety of instruments that can be used to exercise authority and responsibility over natural resources in Cameroon, conflict analysis that looks at user rights and the resolution of conflicts between wildlife and humans over natural resources in Program areas, as well as uncoordinated occupation and competitive land use types, and Promoting the Human Rights–Based Approach and gender mainstreaming.

Building CSO capacity and coupling institutional, core support and technical capacity has largely been observed to sow the seeds of strong and sustainable institutions. Partner CSOs and stakeholders within the programme sites (South West, littoral and East regions) met in a workshop and discussed measures to address emerging issues and produce innovative actions for community-managed schemes to be incorporated in the 2018-2022 Leading Change program application in Cameroon.