The British High Commissioner to Cameroon, Bharat Joshi, has commended Cameroon for its great successes in addressing climate change and environmental protection. Speaking in Yaounde recently, the British diplomatic chief said, Cameroon continues to set the pace in Africa on climate change.

Among the numerous efforts being made by the government of Cameroon, he cited the recent request to be associated with the Copenhagen Agreement, the initialling of the Agreement with the EU to reduce unsustainable deforestation and save hundreds of millions of CFA francs lost through corruption in the sector which is paying off with a drastic reduction in illegal logging by 50% in the last 10 years. He also mentioned progress on establishing the President's National Observatory and recent national tree-planting and climate change response projects.

High Commissioner, Joshi's words of encouragement to State and non-state actors in Cameroon come as a direct reaction to Cameroon's signing of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and the good rating the country has received for reducing deforestation caused by illegal logging in a review by UK think-thank - Chatham House. "We will continue to work with the Government, as we did most recently with our well-received Climate Change Road Show Initiative which took the messages of climate change across Cameroon," he concluded.