China is actually conducting a large program of economic reforms with specific emphasis in the agricultural sector. Since 1978, the country has implemented, sometimes aggressively a series of agricultural reforms (Lin, 1992). These economic reforms have promoted an intensive agriculture and the industrialization which leads to a depth alteration of the environment. In fact, the rapid economic growth in China has resulted to an increase in gross domestic product during the recent past years. This has brought hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. However, environmental effects of

economic growth are increasing, and the unaddressed health effects of environmental pollution instigate major policy challenges (World Bank 2009). In addition to the environmental problems due to the rapid economic growth of the country, China is facing many others difficulties as the growing inequalities in income, the poor access to clean water, bad sanitation, and improper fuels. In other words, despite the growth of the national income in China, the environmental risk factors continue to  affect the health of poor (Tang and al., 2008). This environment alteration results in the pollution of air, water and soil, leading to an increase of human mortality which is more pronounced among the poor people. Therefore, it is important to emphasize the monitoring, managing and controlling of indoor air and water, of the quality of life in private homes as well as in public places, where people stay for a long time, when solving the environmental problems. As a consequence many policies have been developed in China these recent years to control this environmental pollution.
These last years, the environment degradation is a common problem to all countries in the world but somehow, developing countries are more concerned according to the relationship between poverty and the degradation of the environment that has been established by Bhaskar Vira and Andreas Kontoleon (2010). Thus in China as in Cameroon the pollution in all forms is a real situation. But the level of pollution is not so high in Cameroon as in China according to the low level of industrialisation.  But in Cameroon and others developing countries, environmental problems have to be taken into consideration with more attention. In fact, those countries are moving towards industrialization, the same economic model as China and the study of its causes and consequences in China would be a lesson for developing country policy makers to be proactive and then, anticipate the phenomenon. Therefore, the second part of this paper will emphasize the presentation of environmental problems and the related policy initiative in Cameroon in comparison to the Chinese case.

The environmental problems in Cameroon, their causes and some related policies initiatives

The Sub-Saharan African countries depend more on their natural resource base for economic and social needs. Large amounts of the population of these countries live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and other natural resources for income. However, the environmental resource base of the region is drastically decreasing. In Cameroon, the environmental problems include water pollution (Kemka et al., 2004), loss of soil and soil fertility, and a dramatic decline in biodiversity (MINEFOR, 1996). Although Africa's various environmental problems are severely increasing, most countries are facing the absolute poverty.

The environmental problems in Cameroon have many causes. First of all, the agriculture is also the major contributor as in China and is related to inappropriate cultivation techniques. In fact, most of the farmers in Cameroon practice shifting cultivation using slash and burn method to clean their farm lands. As the major production factor these lands become unproductive after one or two years of utilization. The next years the farmers repeat these operations in other lands combining deforestation and bush fire to create and clean other land. This have a global effect in the reduction of soil fertility and the reduction of biodiversity of plant and animal previously living in the deforested lands. In the western part of Cameroon, the problem is more emphasized in the overutilization of inputs due to demographic pressure. Besides, in the West Region of Cameroon there is a huge problem of loss of soil fertility. In the Centre, South and East part, the loss of soil fertility is due to shifting cultivation.  Moreover, the inappropriate use of chemical and pesticides pollutes the environment and sometimes leads to the eutrophication of lakes. A study in Ivory coast (Ouffoue Koffi and al., 2009) states that there is an important amount of organochlorine compounds released in the nature when using some agricultural pesticides. In Cameroon the study of the municipal Lake of Yaoundé has demonstrated the same problems (Kemka et al., 2004). Since many years there is an increase of the phytoplankton resulting in the destabilization of the ecological and aquatic ecosystem.  This water pollution is largely caused by the drainage and the streaming of bad or non treated effluents coming from diverse origins. The industrial waste is also a cause of the environmental pollution, since there is no clear regulation. Taking into consideration the case of the pollution along the Atlantic Coast of Cameroon (Alemagi and al., 2006), it has been assumed that the industries along the Atlantic coast of Cameroon have inflicted a wide range of complication to safety, health and environmental quality for the population depending on the water coming from the coastal stream , it has been established that some of them are  suffering  from many diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, lung and kidney problems after exposition to significant concentration of aluminum (Lenntech, 2004). Deforestation is also a major source of environmental problem. This affects the water cycle and therefore can be an important source of desertification. In the countries surrounding the Lake Chad, the deforestation had caused the desertification around the lake. Therefore, the amount of water inside the Lake Basin is decreasing each year (Hassan Haruna et al., 2008). As a dry region, the Lake Chad trees vegetation is one of the scarce vegetation in the Sahara region and has to be protected.  Despite this particular climatic condition there is a huge deforestation of the lands around the lake. The trees are always cut to meet the households’ needs of the population around because the tree trunks and branches are the major source of energy for these families. With the shortage of wood energy for the household, there is a pronounced degradation and extinction of trees vegetation around the lake Basin. Another source of environmental problems in Cameroon will include construction and infrastructures such as pipelines connecting Cameroon to Chad. The construction of this pipeline is responsible for perturbation of the mangrove ecosystem and causing the destruction of a large amount of trees. Moreover, this pipeline could be a source of future ecological disaster when taking into consideration the case of the oil pollution by the British Petroleum (BP) company along the California coast. As a summary, there are many cases of environmental problems in Cameroon affecting the life of the population, especially the rural poor who are more vulnerable. As response to these environmental problems, the Cameroonian Government develops many policies and projects to address the different problems. The following part outlines the programs and the policies developed by the Cameroonian Government.
The administration in Cameroon has signed since many years different conventions to the fight against environmental degradation.  These conventions result in the definition of a number of laws and regulations on environmental protection. One of the most recent is the law No.96/12 of August 1996 outlining the protection of the Atlantic coast of Cameroon by the treatment of industrial wastes. However, the region is still in a constant pollution situation and there are no wastes treatments at all. The definition and the validation of the law are not sufficient. In fact, the Government needs to implement effectively and control the respect of the established law by the third parties. In fact, the real implementation can help to see the failure and correction needs as in the case of China. This shortfall of the laws also has many consequences such as the one related to the importation of pesticides used in agriculture. In fact, despite the regulation in pesticides importation, there is still a pollution of the environment by chemical products. This is confirmed by Luken et al. (2002) when, discussing the pollution created by compounds like organochlorine. He concludes that the protection of the environment in Cameroon was governed by an inadequate and inappropriate text. Moreover, Napi and Tamo (2007) confirmed this lacking and inappropriateness of laws in Cameroon in the case of environmental protection.
However, there is another option for addressing the environmental problems; this refers to projects and program developed by the Cameroonian Government. Since the 1950's, the authorities conducted several tree planting programs. So, about 40,000 hectares were planted in a period of 50 years. Even though the purpose of the authorities was to restore "natural forest", in fact such plantations were not successful and furthermore, they caused negative impacts (Merlens and Lambin, 2000) because of the top-down approach for the implementation of the policy. For example, the fact that the state owns all the trees in the national forests and imposes plantations has provoked conflicts over land ownership between the Government and local communities (Tonye et al., 1993). This has also caused other problems like famine and misery (Repetto and Gillis, 1988).

In Cameroon there is an unequal distribution of the vegetation and the Government therefore adopts different projects taking into consideration the ecological differences. Thus, for the Northern part (desert and grassland vegetation) there is a restoration vegetation policy whereas in the Southern parts (forest vegetation) of the country there is a protection policy.  In the years 1980, Cameroon developed the project “Opération Sahel Vert” in the North, with the objective to plant about 10 millions of trees in order to reduce the desertification effects. But this project stopped as a result of the economic crisis. Since the end of this project the desert is still going in the north of the country, because also the planted trees of the last project are today cut by the families as wood for household needs. In the South of the country programs like the Korup Park project have being  initiated since 1988 with the main objective to create the Community Forests (CF) in the park surrounded area. In this case, they have used a participative approach to the protection of the forest. Thereby transferring the property rights and the management of local forest resources to the local communities, which should at the same time benefit from the forest products and protect the forest resources. This project is still going on and permits the population surrounding the Korup Park to participate to the conservation of their forest.
Despite the above mentioned policies to curb environmental problems, the rate of deforestation still increases annually in Cameroon, and the situation is the same for the environmental pollution in all its forms.

To conclude, we can say that environmental problems can be found all over the world. In some cases of pollution there are initiatives developed in order to fight against it all over the world. In the specific case of developing countries many policies of protecting environment have been defined, but the level of implementation remains very low. In fact, the institutional, economic, and legal capacities of most governments in the developing countries remain inappropriate and underfunded in dealing with environmental problems. As a country becomes industrialized, policies should be developed and implemented before or during the industrialization to avoid exceeding the tolerable level of pollution of the environment, with the objective of the maximization of social welfare. Then, special attention should be taken to non-point source pollution, which is not easy to control. In the case of implementation of policies, like in China, sustainable aspects of policies should be taken into account, thus the importance of monitoring and evaluation in order to redefine and reorient the policies. Conferring to the case of developing countries, despite the fact that they are not yet industrialized, they should pay more attention to the protection of the environment because there is an increase in the level of pollution and the rate of deforestation is growing year after year. So, they should be proactive by observing what is happening in China for example and define policies that are adapted to their environment. In fact, they still have large amount of resources to protect and to use optimally. They should also accept that poverty do not free them from their duty of protecting the environment.

Rivellie Aimée Tchuisseu Tchepnkep

IMRD-Erasmus Mundus Student