The Nexus between Land registration and Environmental Hazards in some Urban Centers in Cameroon

The issue of land administration was and is still gaining a lot of traction in contemporary research as scholarly agendas attuned to this issue continue to proliferate because peoples’ attachment to land predates recorded history. That is why development agencies, urban development professionals and academicians in urban management issues now concur that the urban development process in less developed countries is most often than not unsustainable as the polemics in land registration is not responsive for environmental sanity given the fact that environmental hazards are the role rather than the exception. Such a trend is frightening that a pragmatic and timely research is indispensable to diagnose the intriguing situation. This paper unravels and disentangles the polemics in the land registration process in some Cameroons’ urban centers (Bamenda, Yaounde, Douala and Bafoussam) in a bid to establish the nexus between land registration and environmental hazards so as to enshrine sustainable solutions into concrete policy options. Using primary and secondary data sources, the findings aver that the land registration in Cameroons is not responsive for environmental vibrancy due to some inherent stalemates which have obfuscated the procurement process. These stalemates inter-a-lea include; inappropriate regulatory frameworks through procedural difficulties, institutional weaknesses, political exploitation and fraudulent practices. These impasses invariably breed frustration and friction to would be land/home owners who are obliged to bypass such cumbersome processes and construct in off limit terrains which are vulnerable to the caprices of environmental hazards like floods and landslides, casting doubt on government's ability to instill a more sustainable land registration system for enhanced environmental productivity. If the land administration process is well-structured and revolutionized via good governance, this might reconfigure uncontrolled urban development to curtail such vulnerabilities to environmental hazards.