Ambassador Garvey’s Statements
Remarks by Ambassador Janet Garvey
Tree Planting Around Lake Chad
Thursday, August 27, 2009
His Excellency, the Minister of Forests and Wildlife,
His Excellency, the Minister of Environment
The Mayor of Matari or Mata (TBD)
The Representative of Local Communities,
The Representatives of Local Organizations
Traditional Rulers,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning, and thank you all very much for inviting me to today’s event. It is a pleasure to be part of this important signing ceremony and tree planting event near Lake Chad. Like you, I and my team have traveled a great distance to be here today, underscoring the importance we place on protecting the environment and combating climate change.
This is my first trip to the Lake Chad region – and I must say, it’s an impressive sight. As you know, this area has been hard hit by climate change and desertification. The natural resources in the region are being depleted due to drought, over-farming, and other activities which contribute to erosion, soil degradation, a shortage of firewood, and other environmental challenges. I don’t have to tell you about these challenges – you know them better than I do. Even in other parts of the country, I hear Cameroonians talking more about strange rain patterns, road collapses, and mudslides, about the climate changing in a way which has real implications for how we all live our lives.
Climate change is a truly global issue and will be the focus of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December in Copenhagen, Denmark. We must all play our part in tackling this problem.
The United States is one of the world’s big contributors to green house gasses, but also a leader in environmental activism. The Obama Administration has made combating climate change a high-priority issue, as reflected in several recently-signed pieces of legislation designed to make America greener. As our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, recently said, “Climate change is a clear and present danger to our world that demands immediate attention. The United States is fully engaged and ready to lead and determined to make up for lost time, both at home and abroad.”
We are also striving to make a “greener” American Embassy in Cameroon. In fact, we soon hope to join the “League of Green Embassies,” which requires a strict adherence to environmentally-friendly measures. We have already implemented many measures, such as tree planting, automatic light switches, and water recycling to reduce our environmental impact. The United States has sponsored a project here in the Cameroon in which sawdust is made into briquettes to be used as cooking fuel. This will assist in reducing dependency on wood as cooking fuel and will reduce deforestation. Several of the Embassy’s Self-Help projects, a fund for small-scale community based projects, are also focused on the environment.
I commend the Government of Cameroon for its commitment to combating climate change, which has included assessing carbon sinks, planting trees, reducing greenhouse gases and micro-projects targeted at the environment. We are pleased to see such work, and look forward to your continued success in the future. This year’s campaign to plant several million trees demonstrates the seriousness with which Minister Ngolle Ngolle and the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife take this issue.
But governments cannot solve climate change alone. Individuals and community groups around the globe have a critical role to play. The American Embassy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are targeting communities around Lake Chad for our contribution to tree planting in this region.
Our project will be managed by Organisme de Développement, d’Etude, de formation et de Conseils (ODECO) and will complement the efforts of the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife. Project funds will be used to develop tree nurseries (in partnership with communities), boreholes to provide water for the nurseries and reforestation of degraded forest areas around Lake Chad. Communities will be organized into groups and ODECO will help strengthen institutions and organizations, guiding the community groups through the process of setting up and managing tree nurseries, as well as planting and caring for the trees, so that in the future they can do this on their own.
I recently saw this paragraph about the forest around another lake, Lake George in the state of New York, written by the American writer S.H. Hammond in 1857. It shows that forestation issues are not new and highlights that forests are as valuable for the human spirit as they are for the environment:
"Civilization is pushing its way ever towards the wild… where shall we go to find the woods, the wild things, the old forests, and hear the sounds which belong to nature in its primeval state?... Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the constitution. I would make it a forest forever. It would be a misdemeanor to chop down a tree and a felony to clear an acre within its boundaries."
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this tree planting event – I hope that our presence here, from the Cameroonian, Chadian and American governments, highlights the importance of protecting the environment in this uniquely threatened area, as well as the importance of working together to address environmental problems. Congratulations for this initiative and my very best wishes for success.