Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED)
Cameroon
Background
Centre pour l'Environnement et le Développement (Centre for the Environment and for Development) - CED, is an independent and non-political organisation founded in 1994. The organisation was created as a reaction to the forest management crisis in Cameroon in the early 1990s, during which the country saw a large increase in industrial logging, illegal development and exploitation of forests, illegal poaching, and ecological, social and economic problems caused by this accentuation of commercial pressure on the forest.
CED‘s work has progressively expanded to focus on problems surrounding extractive industries (of oil and other minerals), which are perceived as threats to the rights of people and the environment. CED has also implemented a gender policy (which extends to the relationships between indigenous peoples and Bantou people). As the organisation has matured, CED has developed expertise on advocacy issues, notably in relation to the World Bank and other multilateral and bilateral agencies.
Since 2000, CED has made capacity-building one of the pillars of its strategy. It provides support to NGOs and local associations in Cameroon’s forest zones, and in other countries in the Congo Basin (including the Central African Republic, Gabon, Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)) to track the illegal exploitation of forests, to support indigenous communities, to increase knowledge of different types of law (on forestry, mining, indigenous peoples, the environment etc), to track extractive and infrastructure projects, and to carry out participatory mapping.
CED’s mission is to contribute to the protection of the rights, interests, culture and aspirations of indigenous and local forest communities in Central Africa, whilst promoting environmental justice and the sustainable management of natural resources in the region.
