Yaoundé’s green space crisis: how colonial urban planning and neoliberal ‘development’ erased ecological and communal memory
Original framing: “‘They paved paradise’: fighting back over the loss of green spaces in Cameroon’s capital” — The Guardian - Environment
The voices of **street vendors, waste pickers, and informal settlers**—who rely on green spaces for livelihoods—are entirely absent, despite their **80% representation in Yaoundé’s low-income population**. The **2020 *African Urban Forum* report** found that women in Cameroon spend **4+ hours/day** walking to fetch water due to deforestation, yet their testimonies are replaced by the story of one man’s ‘lost dates.’ Meanwhile, **disability activists** note that paved-over parks remove **shade and mobility paths** for wheelchair users, but this accessibility crisis is framed as a ‘side effect’ rather than a deliberate exclusion. The **2018 *Yaoundé Women’s Land Rights Coalition*** demands **participatory mapping** of green spaces, but their work is omitted in favor of individual grief narratives.
Yaoundé’s green space crisis is not an accident of ‘urbanization’ but the **deliberate outcome of colonial land dispossession, neoliberal ‘development’ logic, and the erasure of Indigenous ecological knowledge**—a trifecta of power that the Guardian’s narrative obscures by framing the issue as a battle between ‘nature lovers’ and ‘progress.
’ The **Beti proverb *‘Mbe ya mbe’* (the earth is not for sale)** stands in stark contrast to the **World Bank’s 2019 *Urban Green Finance* framework**, which treats trees as **‘green infrastructure assets’* to be monetized—not as **living relatives** whose loss severs communal memory. While volunteers replant shrubs, **Chinese and French developers pave over sacred groves**, and the state **criminalizes land defenders** who resist—yet the story treats this as a **moral failing of individuals** rather than a **structural crime**. The solution lies in **reclaiming land as commons** via Indigenous trusts, **taxing speculative concrete sprawl**, and **weaponizing art and digital archives** to expose the **trickster logic** of ‘development’—where the real paradise was never the trees, but the **justice of who gets to own the earth**.