CONSTRUCTING SYNERGIES FOR THE CONSERVATION AND WISE USE OF WETLANDS IN THE CENTRAL AFRICAN SUB-REGION: LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL PATHWAYS

Introduction

1.1. Background and rationale to the study

It is trite knowledge chat environmental challenges ~re today a global concern in the sense that they effect directly or indirectly humankind in one way or the other. Indeed, for close to five decades now, the promotion of environmental protection has occupied a priority place in international discourse. Environmental challenges are many and various but probably do not affect different communities in the same way and with the same intensity. This fact, not with standing, the global community generally under the auspices of the United Nations, has deployed significant and commendable efforts aimed at reversing the state of environmental degradation. These are evident in the ever increasing Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA’s). Such global initiatives ace aimed at addressing challenges such as, deforestation and forest degradation, pollution in all its forms, climate change, funding for environmental protection, poverty-environment nexus, capacity building for environmental protection, biodiversity loss, in particular threats to wetlands, etc which are trans-boundary in character and consequences. The environmental protection debate at the international level today has indisputably been championed by the climate change conversation which is undoubtedly connected to biodiversity management in general and forest resources management in particular. Only a peripheral reference is made of wetlands in particular.