The Implications of Unsustainable Agricultural Land Resources Exploitation in the Widikum-Menka Highlands, North West Cameroon

Abstract

Natural Resources are of great importance to mankind and land in particular is of greater importance in terms of agriculture and rural development. Land as an agricultural resource is of valuable significance especially to developing economies that largely depend on it for the production of both food and cash crops. Land and the benefits that can be derived from it have been taken for granted and undervalued by civilizations in both past and present, despite warnings of the need for careful land stewardship in the world. Today, the pressure on land has reached such a critical point that serious doubts have been raised on the capacity of the land to meet the demands of a human population rapidly increasing to 9 billion. Land constitutes the fundamental livelihood asset of the rural poor in most parts of Cameroon and the North West Region in particular. The exploitation of this resource for food and poverty alleviation in a highland environment like the Widikum-Menka area in the face of a rapid population growth calls for some urgent concerns, as the land degradation problem which has been manifested through frequent landslide, accelerated erosion, loss of habitat, decreasing agricultural yields and ecological disturbance are rife. This paper therefore aims at examining the implications of the unsustainable land resources exploitation in the Widikum-Menka highland with the view of bringing order in the organization of human activities in this diverse agro-ecological zone which can yield maximum productivity while guaranteeing the stability of the environment. To attain this objective, both the descriptive and analytical methods of investigation were used and several field surveys, interviews and focused group discussions were carried out. This paper also uses the DFPSIR and DPIR framework to give explicit attention to the environmental as well as human impacts of pressures caused by the more fundamental driving forces. The results obtained shows that land resource degradation among other resources remains the major threat to rural livelihoods over the area. The rate of decrease in the parameters within the two decades is rated high according to some agro-technicians. Despite this warning, the study disclosed that, land degradation may persist for the rest of the millennium since there exist no blue prints for sustainable agriculture and land management for the sub region. As such; there is therefore need for the government and NGOs to mainstream Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) as a farming practice in this region.