CLIMATE CHANGE INTERVENTION, ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION, DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTION, CAPACITY BUILDING AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

 CLIMATE CHANGE INTERVENTION,

Climate change has been described as one of the greatest challenge of our time, because it effects are leading to extreme events like drought, floods, landslide, and food insecurity. The root cause for climate change is believed to be global warming linked to the anthropogenic emission of gases such as CO2, CH4 and other greenhouse gases. All these have continually increased world temperature and the consequences of these alterations are starting to become more visible as climate condition and ecosystem begins to change. Climate changes represent a new threat and challenge to many household and social groups with a limited capacity to adapt. Household adaptive capacities are weakened by factors such as high level of poverty, diseases, poor governance, and conflicts amongst others.
Climate change interventions (reduce the sources of greenhouse gases or enhance the sinks to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) and adaptive capacity (the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences) are major challenges that need to be addressed in the current debates. Current mitigating majors are based on the following majors:

•    Promotion of transfer of technologies for the implementation of adapting actions at local level, including natural resource conservation systems.
•    Addressing of the concern of all vulnerable groups, whose adaptive capacity is low, particularly women, the elderly, physically challenged and the children who are particularly affected by the impacts of climate change.
•    Infrastructural investment through the use of climate change proofed technologies.
•    Support of the development and implementation of regional medium and long term adaptation strategies and activities.
•    The protection of ecosystems including trans-boundary ecosystems, which are particularly vulnerable such as the coastal, marine, wetlands and fresh water ecosystems.
•    Development of climate change related Disaster Risk Reduction and management as an adaptation tool, which should be emphasized in the negotiations.
The impact of climate change is going to affect the poorest communities the most, so the focus is shifting to formalising community-based adaptation to climate change. Even with the best of intentions and lots of resources made available by the international community toward climate change, it will only trickle down to the poorest and most vulnerable. 
Forest carbon sequestration is one of the key approaches to reducing atmospheric carbon concentration. This can be done by estimating that forestry projects such as protecting, planting and replanting forests will constitute as much as 25 percent of the total global abatement potential. Therefore, forestry can help mitigate climate change through afforestation, reforestation, avoided deforestation, silviculture change, and biofuel and carbon storages in wood products. This defines our line of interests in forest and climate change.

  CAPACITY BUILDING

CEPOW provides key practical training for climate change oriented activists, conservationist and practitioners with the potential to have a significant impact on sustainable development and research. In line with CEPOW’s vision on guaranteeing a sustainable planet, they build on capacity building as potential tool towards ensuring that people understand their various roles. In this respect, building capacities stand as a priority especially as they try to focus on effective generational shift in a very competitive professional world. The organization seeks to groom environmental visionaries on various aspects that contribute to sustainable development. They work towards equipping , upgrading and building local people’s capacity to enable local people bargain their interests and take up proactive steps that could guarantee sustainable livelihoods opportunities. They offer training, consulting and expertise in the areas of;
•    Career development and career coaching 
•    Environmental education
•    Academic writing and scientific publishing 
•    Fund raising, Project writing and evaluation 
•    Project management
•    Research design and implementation 
•    Training on best agricultural practices (bee farming, poultry, Ntfp’s etc.)
•    Micro financial management
•    Communication and leadership skills

 DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTION

Grassroots innovations

This project is built on the theory of change. it examines and promotes innovations and action orientated  programs, which promotes possible strategies and approaches to support and harness inclusive and local community innovations. This project has as the main objective to empower the broadest representative and downward accountable local institutions for sustainable climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies across the Northwest Region  of Cameroon.

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Education for development

Education is power,education is the pace setter for socio-economic progrees in a country. Being able to guarantee quality education is important. Unfortunately, most underprivileged children worldwide and in Africa and Cameroon especially, have inadequate means to basic education. This program springs from an understanding of education as the foundation for sustainable success in individual endeavors, environmental and development sustainability.

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Community development:

Getting into community development is key towards improving livelihood and structural development. With the down-top approach used by CEPOW, Integrative and action-oriented development will go beyond technical fixing, recognition of the social construction of sustainable development but  engaging local communities on innovative ways that will enable them to play a key role in development policies. We work with local communities to ensure change.

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Mobilization of Funding

For NGOs the availability of financial resources is one of the main factors that determines the scope and duration of projects. To be able to carry out projects for several months, and years, sufficient financial capacity is needed. Each financier has its own criterion for applying projects. CEPOW can obtain projects by presenting research proposals to more general funds.Applying projects only have to be related to a certain theme, for example climate change adaptation,forest conservation, seed multiplication, Non Tree Forest Products (NTFP’S).

For these funds, research institutes have to draft plans related to a specific subject or area defined by the financier. When funding is realized specific experts have to be found. The experts are responsible for the different parts in a project: the collection of data, the analysis and writing/presentation. Within CEPOW, three experts groups could be distinguished: experts working on collection and elaboration of data, technician for training, experts mainly working in GIS and experts responsible for the communication.

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Research is vital towards improving on scientific knowledge. It contributes to predict, describe, explain and improve knowledge on ideas and concepts through systematic approaches. We carry out research projects which cut across areas such as environment, governance, socio-economic development, food and agriculture, education and development, integrated water resource management, forests and climate change, environmental health and renewable energy.

       Environmental Conservation

    We are engaged in participatory research to ensure sustainability in environmental conservation programs. The environment and development research program cut across the following area:
•    Wildlife Conservation
•    Ethno botany 
•    Community Forest Conservation 
•    Natural Resource Management
•    Landscape Restoration
•    Conservation Education

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                   Governance

    This program, seeks to invite government, civil society, the private sector and academia to participate in dialogues and collaborative research partnerships that seek to generate solutions, and most importantly, inclusive multi-stakeholder solutions to solving contemporary and emerging governance/developmental challenges. In terms of policy design, this program lays emphasis on the following targets:
1.    Participatory and inclusive development
2.    Human rights and governance
3.    Indigenous people and the right to development
In view of the above targets, the program seeks to provide training and scholarship at the disposal of affected groups and communities.

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                Food Agriculture

    Our main goal is to contribute to sustainability in environmentally friendly agricultural technologies that contribute to food security. In this way, we aim to engage in research and provided technical support in the following areas of food and agriculture: 
•    Agriculture and land use policy
•    Food supply chain
•    Organic Farming and agro forestry 
•    Animal husbandry and welfare
•    Post-harvest technology

       Integrated water resource  management               
    Water is a key driver of economic and social development while it also has a basic function in maintaining the integrity of the natural environment. However water is only one of a number of vital natural resources and it is imperative that water issues are not considered in isolation. Managers, whether in the government or private sectors, have to make difficult decisions on water allocation. More and more they have to apportion diminishing supplies between ever-increasing demands. Drivers such as demographic and climatic changes further increase the stress on water resources. The traditional fragmented approach is no longer viable and a more holistic approach to water management is essential.
This is the rationale for the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach that has now been accepted internationally as the way forward for efficient, equitable and sustainable development and management of the world's limited water resources and for coping with conflicting demands.
    Our research in this area is focused on understanding the challenges in management, policy and the developments in the water sector in specific contexts, in order to inform management decisions that can lead to sustainability in water management.

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               Ongoing research
    Research is considered as the foundation to improve on knowledge on ideas, concepts in our society. CEPOW takes it as a challenge to get involve or focus on research to provide sustainable solutions to uprising challenges. This will ensure appropriate prediction, descriptions, and explanations in the research domain. We carry out research projects in areas of environment, development and governance. Ongoing researches include Climate Smart Agriculture, “Improving the production and productivity of yam seedlings through the minsett technology”. This research is guided to fulfil the following objectives: To assess to what extend climate smart agriculture module has been adopted by small farmers. To assess how climate smart agriculture is affecting the production of yam. To analyze the challenges, involve in the implementation of climate smart and possible policy actions. To suggest adaptive mechanisms of yam production employed in Climate Smart Agriculture (Minisett Technology).Towards other departments CEPOW) carries out research on agriculture, women and development, climate change.
    Ecotourism “Indentify and analyze the eco-touristic potential of the kimbi fungom park”

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION

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    Conservation-development problems are context specific and should be tackled based on the locality characteristic. Despite an increase in conservation-development research in the last decade, the key challenges of finding a balance between environmental conservation and development are still not evident. Negotiating sustainable environmental conservation and development actions require greater emphasis on diverging values and preferences for the scale of operation and actions. Environmental conservation projects most often failed to adequately address the needs of indigenous communities relying on the concerned natural resources for livelihoods. The ability of local people to effectively cooperate within environmental conservation programs is centred on how well the programs are embedded in the sociocultural relations, politics, resource needs and uses of the local people. In this light, establishing sustainable linkages between environmental conservation and developmental actions require the consideration of local people’s needs within the short and the long run.