Voice of Nature News & Magazine: Why We Exist

When the clouds are full of water, they pour rain onto the earth surface; when the mountain is saturated, it spills lava; and when humans come face to face with excruciating pain and hardship, tears ooze down their cheek. Nature is becoming more and more saturated with our ruthlessness in the form of pollution, unsustainable consumption patterns, wanton depletion of biodiversity species and their habitats amongst others, and is expressing its anguish in different forms and very clearly.

From climate change and its resultant challenges like floods, landslides, and upsurge of climate-related diseases to water crisis and decreasing soil fertility amongst others, nature has been very clear in expressing itself. Despite the loudness with which nature is venting out its anger, many including most media houses in Cameroon seem to have ignored it or better still have not given it a commensurate attention.  This is dangerous! Our welfare and that of generations is dependent on the welfare of nature.

When we launched Voice of Nature News in 2018 as an environment and conservation non-profit news platform with the slogan: speaking for nature & the voiceless, we did so out of a strong desire to raise awareness on environmental issues, stimulate debate and promote responsible natural resource management while grooming future environmental journalists. We wanted to amplify the “voice of nature” through investigative reporting, updates and analysis on climate change, species & ecosystems, environment, agriculture, religion & culture, health, and society.

Our plan was to transcend the traditional workshop, township and politician-centered news and move to  interior forest communities and bring to the limelight local biodiversity conservation and sustainable development challenges and community solutions (traditional knowledge), while reconnecting local communities to innovative solutions to global environmental challenges affecting them. Though access to environmental data and financial resources have deterred the smooth realization of this, thousands have been sensitized and educated about the serious state of our planet and implored to take actions that will culminate in improving the quality of air and water, and the sustainable management of our natural resources via our different social media handles.

In our strive to raise awareness on environmental issues, stimulate debate, it dawn on us we needed to go beyond just investigating and bringing environmental concerns to the limelight to taking concrete actions that will build a greener, safer and more sustainable planet.  This set in course a series of reflections that culminated in the creation of a biodiversity conservation and sustainable development non-profit organization simply called  Voice of Nature (VoNat) in 2019.  The organization was legalized in 2020 with Head Office in Buea, and has since then been engaged in deterring biodiversity depletion & environmental pollution, and fighting against climate change and food insecurity with community kids and youths through media & arts, capacity building, research, livelihood support, outreach and community engagement.

In a bid to reach out to interior communities and other key environmental stakeholders  who may not be able to readily  access our online  platforms for timely environment and conservation news, we have resorted to kick-start the production of the Voice of Nature Magazine. This publication is coming to complement our online news platform Voice of Nature News: https://voiceofnaturenews.info/ in bringing to the limelight local biodiversity conservation and sustainable development challenges and community solutions (traditional knowledge), while reconnecting local communities to innovative solutions to global environmental challenges affecting them.