State and public conservation protected areas policies: a tricky compromise between global ecological stakes and local populations' practices

Gervais Wafo Tabopda et Gilbert David, Int. J. Adv. Stud. Int. J. Adv. Stud. Res. Africa, 2010, 1(2): 83-98. Available from: http://www.africascience.org/

Abstract
In 1992, African states pledged to promote and modernize the structures responsible for the management and conservation of natural resources. Since, there was a strong desire to adapt regulatory and legal frameworks in environmental matters. This commitment is illustrated by the creation of ministries of environment and through the establishment of a new law on protection of resources. The new provisions facilitate interactions between different actors involved, including local communities and NGOs. This is the case of Cameroon, who will write a new Forestry Act in 1994, in accordance with the requirements of the international community, and set a target among others, increasing protected areas to 30% of the country. However, this laudable ecologically project goes by when butter is the vital interests of local populations predominantly rural. Needless to monitor differences in perception between different actors, due to the non-compatibility of interests of each other. This recurring situation is also likely to expose the government to social crises. That said, this research questions the effectiveness of monitoring of protected areas in northern Cameroon, tries to decipher the interplay of actors involved and to assess the ability of the state to implement a conservation policy in consistent with the commitments to the international community. From a spatial-temporal dynamics of land use land cover (LULC) and participant observation, which cross the quantitative variables and qualitative data, we put in evidence the effects of confrontation between the logic that promotes the conservation State and logical use of local people. It appears from this study that the differences are expressed so strong: the work of national institutions produced results in terms of conservation, the State resume its consideration the international discourse, but hard to translate into action, the Local people first for the sake of satisfying their subsistence needs by using resources in protected areas. Hence the difficulty in reconciling the divergent logics of different actors. that diarrhoeal diseases varied statistically from a topographic unit to another. Clearly, we found that diarrhoeal rates were higher among city dwellers settled in the marshy areas (wet lowlands), moderate among those settled on the slopes, and low among inhabitants of the plateaus. More interestingly, the study has shown on a micro-scale analysis that the prevalence rates vary according to whether plateaus are made up of hard rocks or of weak ones, according to whether slopes are exposed to the local wet wind or not; and according to whether marshy areas are used for residential purposes, for economic investments, or for crops and farming. Learning objectives: Such an outcome is extremely useful for Urban Development Planners and Decision Makers to whom these maps of risky areas might help to reformulate/adjust their housing or town settlement policies, and to carry out measures targeting medical prevention.
Keys words: protected areas, conservation policy, government, local communities, land use land cover (LULC), games players.