An Appraisal on the Protection of the Rightto a Healthy Environment by the State of Cameroon in the Oil and Gas Industry

With the political ambition to see Cameroon becomes an emerging economy by 2035, natural resource exploration and exploitation are a key developmental strategy. But these same activities have serious negative effects to both the human and physical environment. One may ponder whether the environment should continuously be sacrificed for the swelling of the state treasury In view of this some critical questions comes to mine what are the environmental commitments of the oil and gas industry, what are the mechanism put in place by the state to curb environmental hazards caused by this industry. To achieve this, the paper set out the following objectives to examine their relationship with the state, as well as to evaluate the level of control the state has over the operations of the petroleum industry in Cameroon. This was done using both the doctrinal and empirical research methods. The paper reveals that, though there are efforts made by the companies to curb environmental damage especially in their operation policies, there is still much to be done in order to match theory into practice. For the better protection of the right to a healthy environment of Cameroonians, this paper recommends that all the relevant stakeholders must be actively involved in the operations of the oil and gas industry in Cameroon. Abilabi Colbert Nicko "An Appraisal on the Protection of the Rightto a Healthy Environment by the State of Cameroon in the Oil and Gas Industry" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-1 , December 2020, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd35806.pdf Paper URL : https://www.ijtsrd.com/humanities-and-the-arts/political-science/35806/an-appraisal-on-the-protection-of-the-rightto-a-healthy-environment-by-the-state-of-cameroon-in-the-oil-and-gas-industry/abilabi-colbert-nicko