Halo, green-conscious viewers, and welcome to this week's edition of Planet Earth: Our Loving Home featuring the impact of climate change on the Central African nation of Cameroon. As in other countries around the world, warning signs that our planet is seriously out of balance are appearing in Cameroon, and if a fast-approaching tipping point is passed, we will all face runaway global warming. One such frightening sign is Lake Chad, previously Africa's fourth-largest lake, which has shrunk ９０％ in size over the past ４０ years.

Dr. Yinda Godwill, Environmental Science program co-coordinator at the University of Buea in Buea, the capital of Cameroon's Southwest Region, is deeply concerned that climate change is quickly making his homeland a place far different than the one he once knew.

Dr. Yinda Godwill (m): The theory that we have about global warming, effects in Cameroon is that due to global warming, there will be more water evaporating from the sea and that water moves from the sea and rises up through the Cameroon mountain region and cools down there in the clouds and falls down as rain.

Up in the north, the waters in Lake Chad, and other waters that are up in the north would also be evaporating faster than they used to and more water will go up into the atmosphere. Now, what happens is this: Water, when it's in the atmosphere, tries to find itself so water vapor will move to where there is more water vapor.

So, you find out that in Cameroon, in the places where we used to have more rainfall, like in the Southwest here, like in Buea, there is a lot of rainfall, rain falls for a longer periods. This year we've had rain still falling in December, which was something that did not use to be.

By October's end the rain used to finish. We did not have rain again, maybe one little shower in December, but we've had rain falling continuously up till now. As we're talking now, rain clouds are building up, they might fall. And this is not normal; it's not normal. The amount of rainfall is increasing. So, the drier places are getting drier and the wetter places are getting wetter.

Supreme Master TV (m): And what are the implications of this in terms of agricultural productivity, in terms of the economy, in terms of lifestyle in general？

Dr. Yinda Godwill (m): Because of global climate change, Lake Chad basin, Lake Chad has reduced to a very small volume and it's threatening to even disappear. And that is affecting their way of life up there; those who were up there doing farming along that area because the fertility of that place and the water that was there are not operating at maximum (capacity), because the climate has changed. That's how it's affecting us.

HOST: Ni John Fru Ndi, founder and chairman of Cameroon's Social Democratic Front Party is also disturbed by how his nation is fundamentally changing due to the rapidly heating planet.
 
Ni John Fru Ndi (m): Well, you see for yourself that rains are falling in Cameroon now more than they have ever fallen before. You see that there are landslides; there are floods in Victoria, getting across to Douala and I was told the other day over the BBC that there were floods in Burkina Faso right in the center towards the desert. So, you see that this global warming is affecting the people.

For more information on these organizations, please visit the following websites
Social Democratic Front Party (Ni John Fru Ndi) www.SDFParty.org
Presbyterian Secondary School Bafut (Njitah Wilson) www.PSSBafut.com
University of Buea (Dr. Yinda Godwill) www.UBuea.net