DEEL 2: JMA op bezoek bij jonge milieuactivisten in Kameroen!

Voor het Erasmus+ uitwisselingsproject waar we samen met Young Friends of The Earth aan meedoen, hebben wij Floor (antropologie student, 26 jaar) naar Kameroen gestuurd om onze partnerorganisatie 'Center for the Environment and Development' te bezoeken. Floor ontmoet zo verschillende jonge milieuactivisten en krijgt zo een kijkje in het werk van een milieuactivist in Kameroen. Hier nog drie korte interviews met jonge activisten:

Romuald (27) werkt voor het CED’s project ‘Greening the respect for Human Rights in the Congo Basin’.

“I’m in the young lawyer advocacy project. We are with 10, working in different regions of Cameroon. I’m a jurist and have a degree in international relations. I do research on forest biodiversity in Africa. The Congo Basin is the second largest ecological reserve in the world, after the Amazon. Activities such as forest exploitation, mining, and agro-industrial exploitation cause problems concerning the biodiversity. The economic policies we put in place in the Congo Basin do not integrate the issue of biodiversity. Because of this lack of interest there’s a lot of deforestation going on. In the city we don’t feel the impact of climate change but when we go to the villages, we see that the women have to walk more kilometers to get water and they do a lot of farming only to have a small harvest. Climate change is real, it is not a myth. But we cannot say it’s a problem of the villagers only, and that it is not our problem.”

 

 

Cynthia (29) is een jonge jurist. Ook zij werkt voor het CED’s project ‘Greening the respect for Human Rights in the Congo Basin’.

 

“Pollution is one of the major problems here in Cameroon. The air is polluted and some of the communities do not have clean drinking water anymore. Young people are interested in finding solutions to the pollution problems but there is not a lot of funding. You can support us with ideas. If you in your country have a good example, you can help us with implementing it here.”

 

 

Ranece (31) werkt voor klimaatrechtvaardigheid. Hij komt hopelijk aan het einde van juli naar Nederland voor het Erasmus+ programma.

“One of our aims as Young FoE Africa is building the next generation of activists and leaders for climate and environmental justice. There’s still a long way to go. We really feel we are not part of climate action development. We just receive solutions on climate change and are not fully involved. I think we should come together, we from Africa and you from Europe, working on climate justice issues, make our voice being heard, and make sure to have an impact on the policy level. But also in the field, because the people who are mainly affected by climate change live in the field and those people do not always have spaces to express their frustrations on these issues.”