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Theme: THE DEGRADATION OF WETLANDS AND ITS SOCIO ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS IN NDOP CENTRAL SUBDIVISION, NORTH WEST PROVINCE CAMEROON

In the tropical insular section of Central America, the Caribbean Islands lost several wetland areas through land reclamation and alteration. Bacon (1993) makes mention on a survey on 220 Eastern Caribbean coastal Wetlands between 1989 and 1991.His reports showed that of these sites, 111 had been severely damaged.
In Europe over 50% of original wetland surfaces have been lost in Spain, Greece, Italy, France and Parts of Portugal, meanwhile the United Kingdom lost over 23% of it’s estuaries and 50% of salt marshes since Roman times (Davidson et al.1991 & RSPB, 1993).
In Asia wetland degradation started as early as the 4th Millennium BC through lowland rice cultivation which began in South East Asia about 6500 years ago. Coupled with its rapidly growing population, countries like Bangladesh completely lost over 1,000 000 ha of floodplain vegetation which once covered the Sylhet Basin. In Central Myanmar, 6,000,000 hectares of floodplain have been lost. It is worth mentioning that large expanses of wetlands in Asia even if not lost, only exist as extensively degraded rice fields .e.g. Thailand alone has a total area of 19 million hectares of rice fields, (Scott, 1993)
Wetland degradation is not uncommon in Africa albeit the paucity of data on their real extent and resource base. Some studies in South Africa around the area from Natal to the Tugela Basin revealed that over 90% of its wetland resources have been lost. It is a similar situation with the Umfolozi catchments which originally had a surface area of 10,000km2, but lost over 58% of its original wetland area and is today left only with about 502km2, (Taylor et al.1995). In North Africa, Tunisia reported a 15% loss of its wetlands, (Hollis, 1992). Due to an over dependence on agriculture, (90% of the population), Rwanda reported a loss of 92000 ha over a total surface of 165000 ha.
In spite of efforts made by the Ramsar Convention on wetlands to curb the problems into which these wetlands are found, Africa still lags behind in its conservation efforts. By January 2001, of the 1050 existing Ramsar sites worldwide, only 95 sites (8.96%) were found in Africa.(A .Tieya, 2007) . Although international conventions have been signed for their protection, Duyan & Jone (1993) estimated that over 84% of Ramsar sites “had undergone or were threatened by severe ecological changes”.

Cameroon is also experiencing wetland degradation. Forpah.C.N,(2004) carried out an overview of wetlands in Cameroon and according to his findings, several wetlands had undergone severe ecological changes, leading to a loss in most of their values and functions. Factors such as agriculture, irrigation, industrial plants, H.E.P generation, bush burning and