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Abstract
The paucity of a comprehensive document on Cameroon’s hazard/disaster risk profile is a limitation to the country wide risk assessment and adequate disaster resilience. This article narrows this gap by retrospectively exploring Cameroon’s hazard/disaster profile. This has been achieved through an investigative approach that applies a set of qualitative methods to derive and articulate an inventory and analysis of hazards/disasters in Cameroon. The findings indicate that Cameroon has a wide array and high incidence/frequency of hazards that have had devastating consequences. The hazards have been structured along four profiles: a classification of all hazard types plaguing Cameroon into natural, potentially socio-natural, technological, and social and anthropogenic hazards; occurrence/origin of the hazards; their impacts/effects to the ‘at risk’ communities/populace and potential disaster management or mitigation measures. In-depth analysis indicate that natural hazards have the lowest frequency but the potential to cause the highest fatalities in a single incident; potentially socio-natural hazards affect the largest number of people and the widest geographical areas, technological hazards have the highest frequency of occurrence; while social/anthropogenic hazards are the newest in the country but have caused the highest population displacement. Arguably, the multi-hazard/disaster inventory presented in this article serves as a vital preliminary step to a more comprehensive profile of Cameroon’s disaster risk profile.
Highlights
Disaster risks matter because around 1.23 million people were killed by disasters worldwide between 2000 and 2019 [1] and it has been estimated that global annual loss from disasters shall increase to around US $415 billion by 2030 [2]
The results have been analysed under the classification of hazards into natural hazards, potentially socio-natural, technological hazards, and social and anthropogenic hazards
Geological Hazards The geological hazards occur principally along the extensive highland in the Western part of the country, which is a major topographical feature of geological origin known as the Cameroon Volcanic Line (CVL)
Summary
Disaster risks matter because around 1.23 million people were killed by disasters worldwide between 2000 and 2019 [1] and it has been estimated that global annual loss from disasters shall increase to around US $415 billion by 2030 [2]. Evolving knowledge of DRR requires regular update of disaster risks so that continuously, new insights can be gained in techniques for DRR analysis and reductions in disaster costs, which can be achieved when disaster risks are understood and managed effectively [4]. Despite rapid advances in contemporary disaster management (DM) knowledge and practices worldwide, DRR remain suboptimal in many countries around the world [5]. This is evidenced by decades of research that has demonstrated that disaster risk hit the poorest nations hardest and those most affected are the poorest and most marginalised people [6]. The DRP of developing countries shows that the vast majority of African countries are riskier than the rest of the world [2]
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