Assessing Social and Environmental Links in Development Strategies for Cameroon: a Process Approach to Sustainability

The links between the social and environmental pillars are particularly under-developed in scientific literature. This article bridges this knowledge gap by applying a socialenvironmental conceptual framework which consists of a check-list of 33 questions. It used same to review various strategy documents of the Government of Cameroon. These comprised one national strategy document, three sectoral strategy documents and two subsectoral strategy documents. To triangulate and enrich these documents analysis, unstructured interviews with 21 key stakeholders was held. The findings revealed some inconsistencies in participatory processes. Findings also revealed insufficient consideration of benefits sharing from the exploitation of natural resource for local social development. Biopiracy issues were also not well considered in the documents analyzed. Nevertheless, natural and human-induced risk management, environmental awareness, generation and use of data, and commitments to infrastructure planning that concurrently promotes social integration and environmental sustainability simultaneously are well considered in the strategy documents reviewed.