Corporate Environmental Reporting: Emerging Trends in Environmental Management. An Analysis of Cameroonian Legislation and Practice

Abstract

Since independence, the drive has been directed towards development, with part of the strategy being industrialisation through putting in place measures to attract and maintain corporate institutions. Today, Cameroon has emerged as a host to a wide number of companies, different in size, nationality, and nature of activities. Unfortunately, the strive to achieve economic development has not been proportionately matched with the urgency to protect the environment. Evidence shows that little or no consideration has been given to the social and environmental effects of corporate activities, even when the government’s primary obligation has been to safeguard social and environmental safety and mitigate environmental damages. When social and environmental problems have surfaced, they have been qualified to be the “business of the state”, exempt from the private sector. Consequently, corporate environmental reporting or disclosure (CER) has never been featured as a priority on the agenda of the state, or corporate bodies. The repercussion has been the maintenance of CER at the embryonic stage as corporations continue to perpetrate conduct that is negligent of the relevance of environmental reporting, even when the state has taken measures through regulations to set minimum standards of CER in an attempt to regulate corporate conduct that contributes to environmental degradation. While we commend the efforts of the few companies that embraced and observed the concept, we argue that this has taken place within the ambit of passive and near absence of regulatory articulation on CER. Its legality is left to inference as the provisions of the law fail to expressly articulate the concept, while its applicability lies at the discretion of companies that chose to embrace it. Most companies ignore the practice either because they are unwilling to do so, see it as a trap, or do not have a story to tell, as corroborated by the near absence of corporate environmental reports. This calls for reforms if CER must serve its role as a preventive mechanism to mitigate environmental degradation.