Abstract
This paper draws on literary analysis and foresight or futures thinking to discuss the futures of royal (and sacred) animals in Cameroon’s Grassfields — a geo-cultural space covering mainly the Anglophone Northwest and Francophone West regions. In the indigenous kingdoms (fondoms) located within the western Grassfields of Cameroon, some nonhuman animals are reserved for royalty and/or are considered sacred. These animals—which include, among others, wild cats (cheetahs, leopards, lions, tigers); buffalos; elephants; porcupines; cowries; and birds like the Bannerman’s Turaco—are all threatened by the ongoing sixth mass extinction of biodiversity across the globe. This paper suggests that literary texts by some Anglophone Cameroonian writers foreground the extinction of wildlife in general and royal and sacred animals in particular. Such texts include Kenjo Jumbam’s Lukong and the Leopard (1978), J.K. Bannavti’s Leopard Watch (2011), Athanasius Nsahlai’s The Buffalo Rider (2008), and John Nkengasong’s Njogobi Festival (2012). The first part of this paper builds on postcolonial ecocriticism and narrative foresight to examine the literary representations of biodiversity extinction, especially royal and sacred animals, in Cameroon. And the second part presents visions, insights and recommendations from participatory foresight workshops that explored preferred futures for royal and sacred animals in Cameroon. The #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures foresight workshops, facilitated online and onsite in Yaoundé (Cameroon), brought together a variety of stakeholders – including teachers, students, environmentalists, artists, journalists, farmers, and indigenous kings (fons) from the Northwest region. The preferred futures and recommendations from the workshops include, among others, breeding royal animals and creating special parks or reserves for them, promoting ecotourism, using artificial parts of royal animals, reinforcing environmental education and legislation, using arts and entertainment. Ultimately, the paper hopes to contribute in advancing Cameroonian and African perspectives on environmental futures in this Anthropocene and Capitalocene era of escalating global climate change and ecological crises.
Keywords
Introduction
A 2024 report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reveals alarming declines in biodiversity in Africa, estimating a reduction of 76 percent among monitored wildlife populations across Africa, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish (WWF 2024). The report indicates a 78–81 percent decline between 2004 and 2014 for the African forest elephant in the Minkébé National Park in Gabon, and proceeds to assert as follows: “There is strong evidence that poaching for the ivory trade, both from within Gabon and from Cameroon, caused this drastic decline in critically endangered forest elephants in Minkébé National Park” (WWF 2024, 32). Furthermore, African golden cats are threatened by superstitious beliefs among local and indigenous peoples in some parts of centre and southeastern Cameroon (e.g., among local communities around the Mpem and Djim National Park near Yoko in the centre and among the Baka Pygmies in the southeast) while wild cats in general are threatened by similar beliefs in the Waza Park in northern Cameroon and large mammals—such as lions, cheetahs, chimpanzees, and elephants—are considered locally extinct in some parts of the Cameroonian Grassfields in the West Region (e.g., Poumie et al. 2021; Simo et al. 2024). 1
The evidence from WWF and other scholars above is not surprising for someone like me who comes from Cameroon in central Africa. Apart from declining elephants and other animal species as documented by WWF and other aforementioned scholars, from personal observation, between 2023 and early 2025, I have seen many Facebook posts celebrating men who have caught more than 10 wildcats (e.g., cheetahs and leopards) in indigenous kingdoms such as Oku, Kom, and others in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. Every time, the man who catches such a royal animal takes it to his indigenous royal palace to offer it to the king and receive royal decorations, usually in the form of being awarded a red feather from the Bannerman’s Turaco, an endangered bird endemic to the Bamenda highlands of Cameroon, including indigenous kingdoms such as Bafut, Bali, Mankon, Mbessa (Mbesa), Kom, Nso, and Oku, all found in the Anglophone Northwest Region. All these kingdoms form part of the Grassfieds of Cameroon, an area full of green savannahs and powerful precolonial kingdoms, and mainly located in the Anglophone Northwest and Francophone West regions of Cameroon, and small parts of the Anglophone Southwest and Francophone Centre regions. The Grassfields is principally inhabited by three main groups of people: the Bamenda, Bamiléké, and Bamum, all descendants of the Tikars (DeLancey 2019).
In the cultural beliefs and practices of the Grassfields kingdoms of Cameroon (both in the Anglophone Northwest and Francophone West regions), animals such as all wild cats (cheetahs, leopards, lions, tigers), buffalos, elephants, porcupines, cowries, and the Bannerman’s Turaco are considered either fully or partially as royal and sacred animals. 2 This is because body parts of these animals are used by royalty, especially kings (fons), for cultural and spiritual reasons in many ways. For example, elephant tusks and the skins of wild cats constitute the royal footstool in these kingdoms. The skins of wild cats like cheetahs and leopards are used in dressing royal beds in the Grassfields. In addition to Cameroon, similar cultural usages of carnivores are reported among chiefs, healers and other special persons elsewhere in Africa (e.g., Fanso and Chem-Langhee 1989; Morris 2014; Sheehan and Elias 2020; Williams et al. 2025). As Fanso and Chem-Langhee (1989) observe, with reference to the Cameroonian kingdom of Nso, in the cultures of all indigenous kingdoms of the Grassfields of Cameroon, “the skin of a leopard [is] the symbol of royalty, power and authority…, [and] the Fon [or King] is the only person in Nso [and any Grassfields kingdom] who can sleep on a leopard skin and put his feet on it” (51). In some kingdoms (or fondoms), such as Mbessa and Nso, it is sometimes argued that only a prince who was conceived on a royal bed dressed with a leopard skin, that is to say a prince born when his father was already a king, can be crowned as a king (Bannavti 2011, 12; Fanso and Chem-Langhee 1989, 53; Nsah Mala 2013, 25).
In addition to the skins of wild cats, cowry shells and porcupine quills are also used in making royal crowns and other paraphernalia; and cowry shells are equally used in making bangles, necklaces, waist beads and other regalia for royal wives (queens; aghi-a-ntok, - plural; or vintok, - singular) and queen mothers (anantok or anetefoyn, - plural; nantok or nafoyn, - singular). Red feathers are used in recruiting men who serve as royal servants or pages and members of indigenous traditional assemblies (Ngumba, Nwerong, Kwifon, Kfifoyn); and red feathers are also used to recruit, decorate and/or award ranks and epaulettes to men who are members of indigenous warrior groups such as Manjong and Mfuh, including decorations for hunters who catch royal animals and bring them to the palace. In addition, there is a cultural belief among such communities that catching a royal animal shortly after enthroning a monarch is a sign of ancestral and divine approval and blessing for the new king's reign. Furthermore, Grassfields royal praise names often include names of some of these royal and sacred animals. For instance, nyamaboa (leopard) is one of the royal praise names in Mbessa Kingdom (to which I belong). In summary, all the preceding examples underscore the cultural importance of these special species of animals to royal life in the Grassfields of Cameroon. Most if not all of these special animals are also used in indigenous pharmacopoeia and spiritual practices beyond royalty in many parts of Cameroon and Africa ((e.g., Williams et al. 2025).
Meanwhile, in line with the 2024 WWF report cited earlier, nearly all these royal and sacred animals, especially elephants, wild cats, and the Bannerman’s Turaco, are all critically endangered species of biodiversity. Our current era, described by some as the “Anthropocene” and by others as the “Capitalocene,” is characterised by the sixth mass extinction of global biodiversity. First proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, but not yet officially adopted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the Anthropocene concept designates our current geological epoch in which human activities have fundamentally transformed the Earth’s biosphere and geological time (Moore 2016, 3–4). The Capitalocene, on its part, is a theoretical concept that points out the significant role of capitalism in destroying the essential life support systems of the Earth and causing climate change (Chandler et al. 2017; Moore 2016, 5–6). In the words of Chandler et al. (2017), “the term Capitalocene signals […] a link between capitalism as a form of social organisation and the ecological, political and economic crises that we currently confront” (203).
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List, both the African forest and savanna elephants are critically endangered; the Bannerman’s Turaco is endangered; African cheetahs, leopards and lions are vulnerable (also see Poumie et al. 2021). Furthermore, Cameroon’s environmental policies and wildlife regulations, such as Order No. 0648/MINFOF of 18 December 2006 and Law No. 2024/008 of 24 July 2024, classify the Bannerman’s Turaco, cheetahs, lions, leopards and tigers as “rare species or species threatened with extinction,” and which “are totally protected and it is forbidden to kill them.” 3 As a matter of fact, in most indigenous kingdoms in the Grassfields of Cameroon, wild cats are now locally extinct or critically endangered. Yet, these animals continue to be caught and taken to indigenous palaces where their catchers/hunters are decorated with red feathers from the endangered Bannerman’s Turaco. 4
In this regard, and given that I am a member of the Mbessa Royal Family (Ntok-a-Mbessa) as well as a transdisciplinary scholar on environmental and sustainability concerns, I could not remain indifferent to the alarming situation of the decline of this special species of biodiversity used as royal (and sacred) animals. The situation prompted me to undertake the mixed-methods research presented in this paper – research which blends literary analysis, narrative and participatory foresight, and futures thinking. In the first part of this paper, I analyse some literary texts that have engaged with questions of biodiversity conservation in Cameroon, arguing that they seek to sensitize readers on the importance of protecting wildlife, including royal animals. As a way of complementing the literary sensitisation approach, in the second part, I turn to action-research by presenting findings (visions, insights and recommendations) from foresight and futures-making workshops on #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures that I organised and facilitated online and later in the city of Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 7 September 2024. 5
I deployed foresight as I believe that its participatory approach can provide avenues for public sensitisation and the collective design of visions and strategies to contribute in halting the decline in royal animals in particular and biodiversity in general. Overall, this paper makes the case for the importance of literary creativity and participatory foresight in supporting the protection and sustainable use of royal and sacred animals in Cameroon. It aims to demonstrate that partnering literary imagination, especially in postcolonial societies, and foresight methodologies can contribute in changing attitudes, mindsets and values as well as imagining and designing hopeful futures in which biodiversity, including sacred and royal animals, is protected and sustainably managed. In other words, it intends to highlight the transformative power of narratives and participatory foresight in strengthening environmental and biodiversity policy in Cameroon, thereby helping to curb biodiversity loss. By doing so, the paper joins the growing body of scholarly environmental humanities and practice-based foresight and futures thinking in relation to biodiversity, climate change, ecological and sustainability issues (e.g., Bengston et al. 2012; Bufford et al. 2024; Cook et al. 2014; Gibbs and Flotemersch 2019; Kim et al. 2023; Russo 2018; Rutting et al. 2022).
Methodological Considerations
This paper employs a mixed methodology comprising of literary analysis and participatory foresight. In the first part, it analyses four literary texts that address issues of biodiversity conservation in Cameroon, and argues that the texts are aimed at sensitizing readers on the importance of protecting wildlife, including royal animals. This part is mainly anchored on postcolonial ecocriticism, which is the functional study of artistic and cultural texts in relation to climate and ecological concerns in formerly colonised societies (e.g., Dlodlo 2024; Ekwueme-Ugwu et al. 2025; Huggan and Tiffin 2010; Nsah 2023; Nsah Mala and Hitchcott 2025). Briefly, postcolonial ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary field of study that examines the intersections between colonial exploitation and environmental degradation, underscoring how the historical subjugation of marginalized peoples is inextricably linked to the imperialist domination of their lands and natural resources (Huggan and Tiffin 2010). In addition to insights on the social function of fiction and literature, the paper also draws on narrative foresight, that is, futures practices that rely on storytelling and myths or metaphors (Milojevica and Inayatullah 2015; Sarpong et al. 2019; Schwarz 2015). Drawing on Milojevica and Inayatullah (2015), narrative foresight can be defined as a strategic methodology that uses the construction and analysis of stories and myths or metaphors to explore potential futures, thereby enabling individuals and organizations to navigate uncertainty by making sense of complex emerging patterns through narrative logic rather than just data projections. As this part will suggest, texts by some Anglophone Cameroonian literary artists address biodiversity issues, sometimes sensitising and warning readers about the extinction of animals in general and royal animals in particular.
To complement literary sensitisation on biodiversity, the second part turns to action-research anchored on participatory foresight by presenting findings—visions, insights and recommendations—from foresight and futures-making workshops. Specifically, it builds on the #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures workshops that were organised and facilitated online and later in the city of Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 7 September 2024. Initially, there was a foresight workshop on the Congo Basin in Leiden, Netherlands, on 22 May 2024 involving over 20 participants—all from Europe and none of them from Africa and the Congo Basin. This was followed by four online workshops organised and facilitated with participants from Cameroon and beyond through Zoom and WhatsApp. Due to the numerous limitations of online workshops, especially frequent electrical power cuts and unreliable internet connection in Cameroon, onsite foresight workshops on #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures were organised and facilitated in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on Saturday 7 September 2024. The Yaoundé workshops brought together over 30 participants, displaying great diversity in terms of age, gender and socio-professional status, including some indigenous kings from the Bamenda Grassfields. In Leiden as well as online and in Yaoundé, we used many futures thinking methodologies, especially the identification of drivers and signals of change, storytelling, scenario planning, and the Futures Triangle—the latter being a tool designed by renowned futurist Sohail Inayatullah to help in designing preferred visions of the future by leveraging signals and drivers of change in the present and historical obstacles to change (Cruz et al. 2023; Fergnani 2020; Inayatullah 2023). Participants were prompted to write their future visions (pull of the future), present motivations (push of the present) and historical obstacles (weight of the past) on sticky notes and paste them onto a white board. Concretely, participants were asked to write down their preferred futures for royal and sacred animals, identify present motivations and drivers of change to preserve biodiversity, and identify historical obstacles that must be overcome to achieve their preferred futures for these animals. Furthermore, in the segment of the Yaoundé workshops based on #RoyalAnimalsFutures, after guiding participants to formulate preferred future visions for royal animals in four groups following the Futures Triangle, the last part of the workshop consisted of formulating policy recommendations in the same groups based on their preferred future visions. With the help of a research assistant, I then collected and typed the information on the sticky notes and recommendation papers. In this paper, I present and discuss the future visions and recommendations from Yaoundé after having clustered them thematically. And it is worth noting that I partly relied on an AI called Writify.ai to cluster the visions and recommendations thematically. The clustered visions and recommendations will be discussed after the literary analysis that follows.
Literary-Textual Imaginaries of Biodiversity in Cameroon
I will now turn to the analysis of texts by some selected Anglophone Cameroonian literary artists exploring biodiversity issues. This is the case with texts such as Kenjo Jumbam’s novella Lukong and the Leopard (1975), J.K. Bannavti’s play Leopard Watch (2011), Athanasius Nsahlai’s novel The Buffalo Rider (2008), and John Nkengasong’s play Njogobi Festival (2012). Jumbam, Bannavti, and Nsahlai are from the Nso kingdom in the Anglophone Northwest Region while Nkengasong is from the Lewoh kingdom in the Anglophone Southwest Region – all four writers are male and I didn’t find any related text on these issues by a female writer from Cameroon. In what follows, in line with narrative foresight (Milojevica and Inayatullah 2015; Muñoz-Martínez et al. 2025a, 2025b) and postcolonial ecocriticism (Dlodlo 2024; Nsah 2023), I use these texts to discuss the literary representations of wildlife and the textual imaginaries of the extinction of (royal) animals in Cameroon and the Congo Basin. As mentioned earlier, narrative foresight advocates the use of myths or metaphors, stories and storytelling to reduce the gap between the present and future, especially by shaping desired or preferred futures (Milojevica and Inayatullah 2015, 152, 161). In this regard, narrative foresight and storytelling through the novels under study can contribute in shaping preferable futures for human-animal relations in Cameroon and beyond, potentially offering avenues for mitigating human-wildlife tensions.
Some of these literary texts address human-wildlife conflicts, which abound in Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. Such conflicts include numerous cases where animals such as leopards and elephants destroy human crops and kill humans in real life in Cameroon (e.g., Granados and Weladji 2012; Jumbam and Kah 2023). Unsurprisingly, such human-wildlife conflicts are portrayed fictionally in texts like J.K. Bannavti’s play Leopard Watch (2011), where a leopard is terrorising the Bamkov community, killing human children and cattle, while their irresponsible king (fon) does not care. When one of the community notables called Gwei, in a state of drunkenness, encounters and kills the leopard at night while returning from the market, the king instead dies in disappointment when he hears the news.
Similarly, in Kenjo Jumbam’s illustrated children’s novella Lukong and the Leopard (1975), the relationship between the people and a leopard is marked by feelings of terror (people shouting and running helter-skelter) and the quest to obtain royal decorations. An 18-year-old boy called Lukong, son of an outcast from Nso kingdom, has an encounter with a leopard on his way back from Jakiri market and he incidentally succeeds in locking up the leopard in a Mfu-club house (Jumbam 1975, 14). Then, Lukong alerts people who come to the scene, and one of the men called Tamfu, a strong warrior of the Mfu society, takes the lead as they respect the king’s orders to bring the leopard alive to the Nso Palace in Kimbo. While in the palace, and the Fon is about to decorate Lukong with the Mfu warrior title of Mformi, Lukong’s father Fai Sarbam, who has sneaked into the royal courtyard disguised as a madman after hearing the news, sets the leopard free and it runs into the wild, still causing panic among people, as he escapes with his son Lukong (p. 35). It is revealed that Fai Sarbam, Lukong’s father, had been exiled from Nso into a neighbouring community because he married one of the numerous wives (queens) of the Fon of Nso.
Despite textual clues about his intentions, I contend that Fai Sarbam’s real intentions for freeing the animal are open to speculation. Quite obviously following the textual clues, Wilson Atem Ebot (1998) concludes that Lukong’s father frees the leopard to save his son’s life: His father, who senses danger because he fears the Fon might kill his son, disguises himself and enters the Fon's crowded courtyard where the award is to be given. Not taking any chances, lest his son be killed, he cuts loose the leopard that is tied alive in the courtyard. As pandemonium sets in, Lukong is seized and carried away while everybody escapes to safety. (Ebot 1998, 44–45)
Although I agree with Ebot (1998), it is also plausible to argue that Fai Sarbam’s objective is to prevent the king (Fon) who had exiled him (out of Nso) from enjoying the meat and skin of a leopard caught by his brave son Lukong. Furthermore, beyond the above plausible pointers to his intentions, I equally suggest that Fai Sarbam’s action of freeing the leopard could be read as an invitation for people in such communities to protect instead of killing royal animals in the quest for getting royal decorations and local fame. Given the cultural and biodiversity importance of royal animals in Cameroonian societies, the novel challenges the old beliefs that royal animals must be caught and taken to the palace. And it does this by inviting readers to change the way they see these animals: what if they saw the leopard as their own child and do all possible to rescue and protect it in the same way that Fai Sarbam wants to protect his son from harm? In other words, in today’s Anthropocene and Capitalocene era of alarming biodiversity loss, and within the context of postcolonial ecocritical scholarship, it is not far-fetched to argue that Fai Sarbam’s freeing of the leopard, coupled with the feasting in his community through the use of domestic animals such as fowls and goats (35), is a clarion call for two major types of cultural shifts in favour of biodiversity conservation. One the one hand, this could be regarded as an authorial invitation to readers to shift cultural practices and protect wildlife and royal animals like their own kin/kids – in the same way that Fai Sarbam protects his son. On the other hand, by reminding them of the possibility of feasting on meat from fowls and goats, the text urges readers to imagine new futures wherein they give up on wildlife meat and continue to breed domestic animals for consumption and proteins, although animal breeding also has implications on human carbon footprints.
This call to transform cultural practices and conserve biodiversity and wildlife is expressed even more forcefully in Athanasius Nsahlai’s The Buffalo Rider (2008), a novel with an explicit pro-environmental conservation message, although filled with tragedy for wildlife. Elsewhere, I have read the tragic fate of the old Buffalo, the main animal character in this novel, as an illustration of co-domestication between humans (Baa Tanle) and nonhuman animals (old Buffalo) aimed at promoting biodiversity conservation (Nsah 2020, 2022). The novel is narrated by a third-person narrator with more emphasis on an old Buffalo, thereby foregrounding human-orchestrated animal extinction in the Nso area of the Cameroonian Grassfields. In summary, the novel recounts the story of an old Buffalo visiting its land of birth around the Kimbo hills in Nso only to discover that human settlements have now expanded into a previous wild animal “highway” or footpath. The old Buffalo was born many years earlier on the Mbar Mountain in Nsoland and had migrated with its family to Bisola, a Nigerian town near the Cameroonian border.
On its way back home to visit its Cameroonian land of birth, the old Buffalo meets a frightened human child around Jakiri, one of the places where the animal highway has been taken over by humans, and the child raises an alarm, leading to many people chasing the Buffalo with the aim of killing it. Despite numerous wounds from bullets and spears, the Buffalo continues running and then meets Baa Tanle, a former trainer of bulls, dogs and horses who has turned into an animal hunter. The Buffalo lifts the heavily-armed Baa Tanle into the air and he lands on its back, and the buffalo-human duo run in the wild for three consecutive days. Although some wild animals like gorillas and a lion attempt in vain to chase Baa Tanle from the Buffalo’s back, in the end Baa Tanle brutally kills the Buffalo, which has become a companion to him (Nsahlai 2008, 109), in the quest to get recognition from the King (Fon) of Nso. This novel demonstrates that the buffalo, like wild cats and other royal animals, is hunted not only as food but with the aim of getting royal rewards. The vivid brutality with which Baa Tanle kills this animal companion, despite the friendship they have already developed for three days, is meant to evoke both pity and empathy in the readers for the old Buffalo, and by extension other wildlife, thereby nudging readers to consider being empathetic and protective of wildlife. As I have argued elsewhere (Nsah 2020, 2022), faced with this alarming situation of killing wildlife for such socio-cultural reasons, Nsahlai overtly condemns this practice, drawing readers’ attention to possible futures or imaginaries where these animals will all be extinct if nothing is done in the present to avert the situation.
Similarly, John Nkengasong’s play Njogobi Festival (2012) exposes and vehemently denounces human-orchestrated wildlife destruction through the human quest for bush meat. Set in a fictional country called Langaturuturu (symbolising Cameroon), the play depicts people whose unstoppable love for game or bush meat, coupled with alarming levels of corruption in the forestry sector, has pushed them to hunt the wild animals in their forests to the brink of total extinction. The seemingly ignorant inhabitants of Langaturuturu and their corrupt government are emptying their forests of both wild animals and timber. As I have suggested elsewhere (Nsah 2015), the name Langaturuturu probably derives from the Cameroonian Pidgin English word “langa” which means greed and the urge to have what belongs to someone else. In this regard, Nkengasong’s play aptly portrays a people and government driven by greed and characterised by both short-sightedness and short-termism: their hunger for immediate gains (bush meat and money from the sale of bush meat and timber, including money used as bribes) completely overshadows the long-term interests of future generations who will also need the animals and timber in their forests.
People like Mantrobu (meaning Troublesome Man) in the play who squanders money from the sale of bush meat on alcohol instead of paying his children’s school fees (Nsah 2015, 42) are destroying the future of their children and country both environmentally and educationally. As a result, I contend that Nkengasong seeks to raise ecological awareness among Cameroonians, urging them through the play to change their behaviour and “think about their children’s children (future generations) when acting in the present and learn to value the forests and all the good things that nature provides to them so that they can live longer and happier lives” (Nsah 2015, 46–47; Nkengasong 2012, 63–64). From this perspective, Nkengasong as well as Nsahlai explicitly deploy their literary talents at the service of biodiversity conservation — including royal and sacred animals — and safeguarding the rights and wellbeings of present and future generations of both humans and nonhumans (e.g., see the UN Pact for the Future adopted in 2024). 6
From a postcolonial ecocritical perspective, I contend that these texts not only challenge cultural practices that are harmful to biodiversity but also invite readers to stop dominating and exploiting wildlife like their former colonisers or neo-colonisers. Furthermore, taken together, I suggest that all the writers discussed above offer us two textual imaginaries or scenarios of the future of biodiversity: one of despair and total extinction if nothing is done to stop human destruction of nature and one of hope and restoration if humans change their ways, including the transformation of our cultural practices, and learn to protect and/or sustainably use biodiversity. And this situates their texts within the realm of environmental humanities and narrative foresight – storytelling as a means to shape the future(s) of biodiversity, especially royal and sacred animals, in Cameroon. However, it can be argued that most Cameroonians from the Grassfields seem not to have heard or heeded their futuristic literary messages of conserving biodiversity.
Maybe their messages have not been heeded because they single-handedly, instead of collaboratively, designed their textual imaginaries of the futures of biodiversity and royal animals. Perhaps, their messages have not been heard because Cameroonian environmental stakeholders, both national and local, have not come on board to use such texts in massive sensitisation campaigns across the country, especially through education, not only in the Grassfields kingdoms (mainly in the Northwest and West regions) where royal animal hunting is principally practiced, but also in bushmeat hotspots (e.g., in villages of the Centre, East, Litoral, South and Southwest regions) and elsewhere. In other words, Cameroonian biodiversity conservation stakeholders need to leverage the power of arts and literature to sensitise citizens on the need for mitigating and adapting to climate change, protecting the environment, and preserving biodiversity.
Of course, I am aware that environmental sensitisation alone does not suffice given that other important aspects of environmental policy such as providing alternative sources of income and protein, reducing corruption and effectively enforcing wildlife laws, among others, are also important. That being said, whatever may be the reasons why the messages of these literary writers seem not to have not been heard and heeded, I considered the continuous killing of royal and sacred animals in the Grassfields as symptomatic of the insufficiency of using literature to sensitise the people on the importance of protecting biodiversity. Consequently, this prompted me to deploy participatory foresight methods to co-construct hopeful futures for royal and sacred animals in Cameroon with workshop participants, including indigenous kings. The next section examines insights from the workshops.
#RoyalAnimalsFutures – Participatory Foresight for Biodiversity in Cameroon
Despite the existence of pro-biodiversity literary texts in Cameroon such as those examined above, as mentioned earlier, between 2023 and early 2025, I have come across many Facebook posts celebrating men who have caught more than 10 wildcats (e.g., cheetahs and leopards) in indigenous kingdoms such as Oku, Kom, and others. These people/hunters are generally celebrated for their bravery and (sometimes) the cultural belief that catching such special animals brings blessings and honour to their kingdom. 7 Accordingly, every time a man catches such an animal and takes it to his indigenous royal palace to offer it to the king, he is rewarded with royal decorations, usually in the form of being awarded a red feather from the endangered Bannerman’s Turaco. In the face of this disturbing situation and due to my membership of the Mbessa (Mbesa) Royal Family as well as my awareness of biodiversity loss, especially in line with numerous foresight initiatives that also point to catastrophic biodiversity loss on a global scale (e.g., UNDP 2024; UNEP 2024), I was compelled to go beyond pro-biodiversity literary texts and organise participatory foresight workshops that would involve ordinary citizens and indigenous kings in exploring preferred futures for royal and sacred animals in Cameroon. Indeed, I wanted the workshops to simultaneously explore preferred futures for these animals while also serving as platforms for the sensitisation of workshop participants on the importance of biological and cultural diversity.
In this regard, in 2024 I organised and facilitated a series of online and offline foresight workshops on the #CongoBasinFutures. First, I facilitated a foresight workshop on the Congo Basin at the Lorentz Center in Leiden (Netherlands) on 22 May 2024 involving over 20 participants—all from Europe and none of them from Africa and the Congo Basin. This workshop only minimally evoked biodiversity among many other concerns in the Congo Basin such as mining, conflicts, deforestation, etc. For instance, one of the Leiden participants imagined a future in which “greater global awareness raises the value of the Congo Basin biodiversity.”
After Leiden, in addition to numerous exchanges in a dedicated WhatsApp group involving over 30 people from Cameroon, Congo, and India-UK, with support from the School of International Futures (SOIF), I facilitated four online workshops on Zoom with about 10 people from Cameroon (15 & 22 June and 6 & 13 July 2024). Mainly due to factors such as erratic electricity supply and unreliable internet connection in Cameroon where most of the Zoom participants were found, as well as limited online collaboration and interaction, these WhatsApp exchanges and online workshops also only minimally engaged with biodiversity amidst many other concerns such as agriculture and food security, health, education, mining, conflicts, deforestation, and so forth. For example, in a Flip the Future exercise on WhatsApp, one of the Cameroonian participants (a seasoned environmentalist) flipped the future of the Congo Basin from “an area with the highest biodiversity in the world” to “an area with the lowest biodiversity in the world by 2074”. Whiteboard with sticky notes based on futures triangle exploring futures of royal animals (Yaoundé, 07 September 2024).
Having realised the numerous limitations of online workshops, especially difficulties linked to frequent electrical power cuts and unreliable internet connection in Cameroon, I obtained additional funding from the Sharing a Planet in Peril seed funding at the University of Cologne (Germany) and was able to organise and facilitate a day-long onsite foresight workshops on the #CongoBasinFutures, including a workshop dedicated to #RoyalAnimalsFutures, in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on Saturday 7 September 2024. These workshops brought together over 30 participants, displaying great diversity in terms of age, gender and socio-professional status. These included teachers and researchers, environmentalists, farmers, nurses and health personnel, writers and poets, filmmakers, musicians, security and military officers, journalists, students, civil society actors, policymakers, public administrators, and indigenous kings. Among the poets and writers present, three of them went on to write futuristic short stories which I then edited; the edited stories have been published in English and translated into French—although the stories do not focus on royal animals. 8
Meanwhile, given the very sensitive nature of royalty in Cameroon’s Grassfields, it was imperative for me to involve some indigenous kings in the workshops if I wanted it to succeed. Accordingly, leveraging my royal diplomatic skills as a prince from the Mbessa Royal Family, I reached out to the Northwest House of Chiefs (Kings) – through its then President His Majesty Kevin Yakum (current Fon of Bambalang) – and to some individual indigenous kings to seek their collaboration on exploring the futures of royal animals in Cameroon. And I was able to mobilise the Kings (Fons) of Mbessa (His Majesty Gilbert Njong III), Oku (His Majesty Ernest Ngum IV), Din-Noni (His Majesty Joseph Ntang II), and Ajung (His Majesty Peter Chuo Ketu) who joined the #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures workshops in Yaoundé. 9
In addition to being indigenous leaders, these Kings are also part of modern administration and policymaking processes in Cameroon in various ways. For instance, His Majesty Gilbert Njong III also doubles as a member of the Northwest House of Chiefs and Northwest Regional Assembly (NWRA), thus being a policymaker. At the time of the workshop, His Majesty Ernest Ngum IV was a civil administrator in training at the National School of Administration and Magistracy (ENAM), thus being a public administrator trainee. Meanwhile, His Majesty Yangsi Mbah (Akeh) and His Majesty Kevin Yakum (Bambalang) were willing to join the workshops but only arrived in Yaoundé (from Bamenda) at night when the workshops had already ended. While His Majesty Yangsi Mbah also doubles as a teacher by profession, His Majesty Kevin Yakum is also a civil administrator who graduated from ENAM and served, until December 2025, as the President of the Northwest House of Chiefs and Vice President of the Northwest Regional Assembly (NWRA). During the #RoyalAnimalsFutures foresight workshop, participants and indigenous kings relied on the Futures Triangle and the drafting of recommendations in groups to explore the futures of royal animals in Cameroon.
Results From Futures Triangle and Drafting of Recommendations.
Discussion of Results
The workshop participants proposed various visions as preferred futures for royal and sacred animals in Cameroon as shown in the table above. They used sticky notes to share their preferred futures and I then clustered them into four broad visions, relying partly on an AI called Writify.ai. It should be noted that preferred futures are visions of the future that are desired, and often based on values, visions and goals. 11 The preferred visions proposed by the Yaoundé #RoyalAnimalsFutures workshop participants seek to address the challenges identified earlier in this paper, especially by collectively suggesting possible ways in which the animals can be preserved for present and future generations.
Four Broad Preferred Visions of the Future for Royal Animals: Pull of the Future
In what follows, I present and elaborate the four broad preferred visions, blending clustered information and my own commentaries, interpretations, and suggestions, as well as relevant scholarship where necessary.
Breeding and Conservation of Royal Animals
• In the future, there is the creation of special parks and reserves to preserve royal and sacred animals; there is the rearing of species of royal animals and the planting of more trees for habitat. These could also involve the use of existing sacred forests in and around indigenous royal palaces as well as community-managed forest reserves. There is also the promotion of currently existing national parks and reserves to preserve biodiversity. Overall, in the future we work towards harmony between humans and royal animals in particular and biodiversity in general. However, it should be noted that details about the specific types of parks and reserves proposed as well as which species of royal animals would be prioritized for breeding and conservation remain to be worked out by relevant stakeholders before and during the implementation of these visions and recommendations.
Sustainable Tourism, Royal Heritage & Sustainability Education
• In the future, there is royal animal tourism, that is, economic situations whereby tourists visit royal animals in special parks and reserves. This tourism would protect royal animals and raise money and improve community livelihoods, thereby being sustainable and beneficial for both the animals and local communities. In the future, there is also cultural continuity through the sustainable use of currently-held and newly-acquired royal animals and their parts. And there is also education for sustainable development (ESD), including changes in curricula and the translation of environmental knowledge into indigenous Cameroonian languages for wider sensitisation.
The first two broad visions discussed above align with substantial scholarship that demonstrates the importance of ecotourism and well as indigenous languages in biodiversity conservation in many parts of the world, including Africa and Cameroon (e.g., Ens et al. 2016; Frainer et al. 2020; Gafner-Rojas 2020; Gorenflo and Romaine 2021; Kelbessa 2022; Menbere and Menbere 2018; Samal and Dash 2023; Veríssimo et al. 2025; Wilder et al. 2016).
12
Furthermore, recourse to sacred forests and the potential creation of new sacred sites for conserving royal animals in Cameroon corroborate research on the importance of sacred sites and community-driven approaches in biodiversity and cultural diversity preservation in general. In this regard, drawing on IPBES (2024), Larigauderie et al. (2025) recommend as follows: The first strategy for transformative change emphasizes the conservation, restoration, and regeneration of places with both cultural and ecological significance. Biocultural approaches, such as community-led conservation, can simultaneously sustain ecosystems and strengthen cultural identity, particularly when Indigenous and local governance systems are respected and empowered. (2)
This excerpt demonstrates that efforts such as breeding royal animals, preserving existing and/or creating new sacred forests, and promoting ecotourism based on royal animals in Cameroon can strengthen community-based conservation and lead to the regeneration of places with both cultural and ecological importance.
Artificial Alternatives & Environmental Sustainability
• In the future, there is the creation of artificial forests around indigenous palaces where sacred forests do not currently exist. And there is the replacement of real royal animal artifacts with artificial ones, that is, collective efforts are deployed to seek alternatives while sustainably maintaining and managing the current stocks of royal animal parts. In this regard, modernity can be leveraged, given that most Cameroonians of the present generation have embraced many non-African cultural practices and sometimes they already use artificial articles that represent our royal animals.
It should be noted that the use of artificial artifacts, I suggest, would influence community perceptions of royal animals away from predation to protection. Furthermore, the use of such artificial artefacts could negatively impact cultural practices involving the use of real royal animals, while at the same time demonstrating cultural evolution, adaptation and resilience among the communities. Cultural transformation and adaptation are indispensable ingredients in our efforts to combat climate change and preserve biodiversity. In this regard, Larigauderie et al. (2025) assert: “Past efforts to stem biodiversity loss and nature’s decline have not met their goals because they have failed to address the underlying causes: deeply rooted, interconnected social and cultural patterns that shape, influence, and reinforce direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss” (2). It is also worth noting that research shows that existing sacred forests in Cameroon and elsewhere in Africa contribute to biodiversity preservation in general (e.g., Juhé-Beaulaton and Salpeteur 2017; Loh et al. 2025; Sinthumule 2024; Tiokeng et al. 2019).
Regulation and Financial Incentives
• In the future, and even in the present, there should be the strict implementation of wildlife laws (both national and international) on protected species, including royal and sacred animals. There should be the introduction and reinforcement of taxes on royal animal parts, with raised funds channelled towards biodiversity conservation efforts.
Four Broad Motivations to Act Now: Push of the Present
The workshop participants identified many motivations (drivers and trends) for action to preserve Congo Basin biodiversity and royal animals. I now group and discuss them under four broad categories.
Biodiversity Loss & Environmental Disasters
• This is evidenced through global biodiversity loss and the disappearance of rare species of animals and plants. Further evidence includes frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, earthquakes, and global warming, which all contribute to biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, and other climate change impacts.
All these phenomena linked to biodiversity loss and climate change, it should be noted, are well documented across the globe, not only in academic publications but also in authoritative reports from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES), the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—e.g., see IPCC (2023), IPBES (2024), and IUCN (2025).
Cultural Heritage & Posterity
• This includes the risk of the discontinuity of the cultural heritage linked to animal skins, thus preventing the traditional uses of royal animal products. In turn, this contributes to undermining the cultural significance of biodiversity, amplifying the impact of biodiversity loss on indigenous cultures, and depriving future generations of their cultural heritage.
Policy & Action for Biodiversity Conservation
• This refers to the adoption of new policies and laws (both national and international) to ensure biodiversity conservation. Specifically, these would include national laws such as Cameroon’s 2024 Forestry and Wildlife Law (No. 2024/008 of 24 July 2024) and international agenda and regulatory mechanisms such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the 2024 UN Pact for the Future.
Awareness of Biodiversity Threats & Use of Foresight
• This includes the raising of climate and environmental awareness, especially through education for sustainable development (ESD), environmental awareness campaigns organised by NGOs, the use of arts, and other forms of public awareness initiatives. It also includes the use of participatory foresight methods and workshops that adopt a proactive, long-term approach to identify threats causing biodiversity loss and consequently explore undesirable and preferred futures for biodiversity conservation. In this regard, it is worth recalling that research has shown the importance of environmental education, including foresight and indigenous knowledge, in supporting biodiversity conservation in Africa and Cameroon and elsewhere (e.g., Børresen et al. 2022; Ednie et al. 2023; Grúňová et al. 2017; Njoh et al. 2022).
Four Broad Historical Obstacles (and Sometimes Motivations): Weight of the Past
The participants identified the following obstacles from the past (which sometimes instead serve as motivations or stepping stones) that could prevent the achievement of sustainable futures for biodiversity and royal animals in Cameroon and the Congo Basin. It should be noted that often participants in my workshops have categorised the push of the present and weight of the past into both motivational and obstructing factors, unlike Sohail Inayatullah’s original conception of the weight of the past consisting only of barriers and obstacles to change. That being said, I now elaborate participants’ insights on the weight of the past below under four broad categories.
Culture of Killing and Consuming Royal Animals
• The historical hunting, killing and consumption of royal animals as well as the award of prestigious titles as rewards to those who catch and bring royal animals to the Grassfields indigenous palaces have all contributed to local biodiversity loss. If unstopped, neither regulated nor modified, such practices would also prevent the achievability of any sustainable and preferred futures for biodiversity in general and royal animals in particular. It should be note that this aligns with research which shows that “poaching” or illegal hunting is detrimental to biodiversity conservation in Cameroon and the Congo Basin (e.g., WWF 2024).
Ecological Degradation and Habitat Loss
• There is historical ecological degradation, especially through colonially-introduced practices such as monocultural plantation agriculture that causes deforestation and the invasion of ecosystems, and leads to habitat loss and biodiversity extinction or loss, including royal and sacred animals.
Impact of (Neo-) Colonialism on Royal Animals
• Historically, some custodians of royal animals and even royal animal parts (e.g., elephant tusks) were sold to European slavers and colonisers in the past; and some of these animal parts still continue to be sold into neocolonial markets outside Africa today. This also speaks to the historical and ongoing negative impacts of colonialism and imperialism on the survival and conservation of royal animals, with emphasis on the exploitation and resource depletion caused by colonial and neocolonial capitalist practices.
Conservation Challenges and Lack of Ecological Awareness
• There have been numerous challenges to environmental protection in the Congo Basin and Cameroon. These include insufficient resources to monitor and protect biodiversity, including royal animals. Other challenges include the destruction of the habitat for biodiversity by deforestation and climate change; the widespread consumption of bush meat in Cameroon and Africa; and the lack of ecological consciousness due to limited or no environmental education. For instance, there is lack of education and awareness on the rights and protection of royal animals in Cameroonian schools.
Four Broad Categories of Policy Recommendations on How to Protect Royal Animals
As earlier mentioned, following the Futures Triangle activity, the participants brainstormed in groups and came out with a number of policy recommendations aimed at how to protect biodiversity in general and royal animals in particular in Cameroon and the Congo Basin. The recommendations, shown in the table above, are further elaborated below under four broad categories, including my commentaries, interpretations, and suggestions.
Awareness Raising and Education on Royal Animals
• Local populations should be educated on the importance of preserving royal animals and alternatives offered to them. For instance, instead of killing these animals to be decorated, local hunters should be rewarded for spotting and reporting the presence of royal animals for monitoring and preservation. Mechanisms should be established to verify when such a spotting is reported. Still in terms of alternatives, artificial artefacts can be used in place of royal animal parts. In this regard, training sessions should be organized to equip people with skills that can be used to produce artificial animal skins and other parts for royal use. • Overall, the educational system (at national and local levels) should be updated to include more environmental education lessons and days such as the World Biodiversity Day (22nd May) and the World Environment Day (5th June) should be widely celebrated to create more awareness on the need to preserve biodiversity and royal animals. This should entail changes in school curriculums. Relatedly, it is important to invest in educational talks on the preservation of royal animals and to teach foresight and futures thinking as skills aimed at harnessing collective intelligence to address local and global challenges such as biodiversity loss, climate change, food security, and governance, among others.
Arts, Entertainment & Ecotourism for Conserving Royal Animals
• The government should encourage artistic and other forms of creativity in environmental activities by organizing competitions in this domain. In the same vein, entertainment and animation using royal animals as characters should be created and disseminated widely. For instance, children’s picture story books, poetry books, plays, and novels or short stories should be written to promote the protection and sustainable use of royal and sacred animals. Local and international publishers have a role to play here. Furthermore, there should be the creation of podcasts and shows on radio and TV where stories about royal and sacred animals can be narrated by the various communities as a form of education and entertainment. • Finally, entertainment and cultural activities should be integrated into parks and reserves for royal animals and biodiversity to attract tourists and raise revenues for further preservation and protection of biodiversity and royal animals while improving human livelihoods. In other words, ecotourism should be encouraged through the creation of parks and reserves where artistic and cultural activities are embedded or performed to entertain tourists who want to visit sacred and royal animals therein.
Research and Conservation of Biodiversity and Royal Animals
• In addition to existing parks and reserves for biodiversity in general, there should be the creation of specialized parks and reserves for royal and sacred animals in Cameroon and in the Congo Basin. This should help in providing natural and safe habitat for royal animals. • Moreover, there should be research on and breeding of royal animals through innovative methods like artificial insemination. For instance, sperms could be obtained from royal animals under the threat of extinction in areas where they are available to fertilize royal animals in other places. Accordingly, there should be research and regeneration of food for royal and sacred animals where they are preserved out of their natural habitat. This would also create business opportunities and improve livelihoods.
Collaboration, Policy and Regulation
• All stakeholders, including the State, local decision-makers, and indigenous traditional authorities, should collaborate and effectively enforce national laws and international regulations on environmental protection and biodiversity conservation, including those prohibiting the unauthorised hunting of vulnerable and endangered animal species such as royal animals. These regulations include Cameroon’s 2024 Forestry and Wildlife Law, the 1993 UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the 2024 UN Pact for the Future, among others. In the same vein, Cameroonian authorities should suspend the importation and exportation of leather and wool derived from royal animals and other endangered species of biodiversity. • Finally, there should be concrete and effective collaboration between the government (national and local) and indigenous traditional authorities in preserving royal and sacred animals. Such collaboration should cut across all areas, including (but not limited to) creating special parks and reserves for royal animals; establishing moratoria on the hunting of certain animals; deciding hunting seasons and setting quotas for certain royal animal species; decorating and rewarding people who spot and report royal animals for monitoring and conserving; enforcing laws and regulations by leveraging indigenous institutions such as Fons (Kings) and their assemblies (Nwerong, Ngumba, Kwifon, Kfifoyn); and jointly holding citizen assembles or village assemblies with the use of foresight and other participatory methods to collectively design and manage the futures of biodiversity and royal animals.
Conclusion
This paper has presented insights from literary analysis and participatory foresight which all intend to shape ecological futures in Cameroon and the Congo Basin. On the one hand, the texts under analysis and foresight workshops point to catastrophic futures of environmental degradation and biodiversity extinction if nothing is done. And on the other hand, they depict imaginaries of desirable or preferred futures for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in general and royal and sacred animals in Cameroon in particular.
Within the framework of narrative foresight and postcolonial ecocriticism, the paper has suggested that the literary or textual imaginaries seek to raise awareness and educate readers on the importance of protecting endangered biodiversity while also denouncing socio-cultural practices such as corruption and bad governance, the hunting of royal and sacred animals, and the award of prestigious titles to those who kill and bring royal and sacred animals to indigenous palaces in search of decorations. Nevertheless, the analysis in this paper suggests that these literary strategies seem to be insufficient, thereby necessitating participatory futures making activities hinged on collective intelligence. As a result, this led to the organisation and facilitation of the #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures foresight workshops that collaboratively designed preferred futures and policy recommendations for sustainably managing royal animals and biodiversity in Cameroon and the Congo Basin.
The workshop participants produced imaginaries and visions that include breeding and conserving royal animals, sustainable eco-tourism, and conserving royal heritage for present and future generations. They also advocated promoting education for sustainable development (ESD), making use of artificial alternatives for royal animals or parts thereof to ensure environmental sustainability, providing financial incentives (including taxation) for wildlife preservation, and enforcing environmental laws and regulation. Numerous motivations in the present (drivers and trends) to seek alternative futures for royal animals were identified. These include alarming trends of biodiversity loss and environmental disasters and the need to preserve cultural heritage for posterity. Others include increasing national and international policies and actions for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection, raising awareness of biodiversity and ecological threats, and the need to use foresight and other participatory approaches to address these issues through collective intelligence. A number of historical obstacles that prevent or slow the achievement of sustainable futures for biodiversity were also identified. These obstacles comprise the cultural practices of killing and consuming royal animals (both their meat and parts used for other purposes), increasing ecological degradation and habitat loss, the impacts of (neo-)colonialism on biodiversity and ecosystems, the lack of ecological awareness, and other conservation challenges.
Drawing on the future visions, motivations and obstacles, the workshop participants then formulated a set of policy recommendations, many of which are overlapping among themselves and with the visions, motivations and obstacles. These policy recommendations are summarised as follows: raise awareness and educate about the importance of biodiversity and royal animals; deploy arts, entertainment and ecotourism for conserving royal animals; promote research on the conservation of biodiversity and royal animals; and ensure collaboration between government policymakers and indigenous leaders in the pursuit of policy design and implementation in favour of biodiversity preservation in Cameroon and the Congo Basin. Clearly, the implementation of these recommendations and the consequent actualisation of the preferred futures both entail deep societal transformations in terms of cultural practices and values, artistic and literary creativity, educational methodologies and systems, and policy directions and priorities in the concerned local communities as well as in Cameroon and beyond. Moreover, in view of the above visions and recommendations, it is incumbent on Cameroonian indigenous leaders to prohibit or limit the killing of these animals and collaborate with other relevant authorities and stakeholders in the implementation of these visions and recommendations to ensure sustainable futures for royal and sacred animals in particular and biodiversity in general in Cameroon and in the Congo Basin. In this regard, there are ongoing discussions and negotiations with some indigenous kings, especially those who took part in the workshops, to start implementing these recommendations in their various kingdoms for the wellbeing of present and future genrations. 13
And this should be done with utmost urgency as global biodiversity continues to decline alarmingly: while rounding off the first round of revisions for this paper in October 2025, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released yet another distressful update on the global state of biodiversity. According to the update, “The IUCN Red List now includes 172,620 species of which 48,646 are threatened with extinction.” Furthermore, Dr. Grethel Aguilar, IUCN Director General, said that “While species like Arctic seals and many birds face growing threats, the recovery of the green turtle reminds us that conservation works when we act with determination and unity,” and went on to recall that “[…] governments and communities have a pivotal opportunity to accelerate action that protects biodiversity, stabilises our climate, and builds a future where people and nature flourish together.” 14 According to the update, “more than half of bird species globally are in decline,” and it is worth noting that one of the royal and sacred animals in Cameroon discussed in this paper is the endangered Bannerman’s Turaco, a spectacularly beautiful bird endemic to the Bamenda highlands in the Cameroonian Grassfields.
Before concluding, throughout this paper, the need for raising awareness and promoting education for sustainable development (ESD) stands out among currently existing strategies to build sustainable futures, including sustainable biodiversity use, thus confirming the crucial role of ESD in foresight and futures thinking (Dannenberg and Grapentin 2016). Biodiversity, it should be noted, is crucial for the bioeconomy (Gatune et al. 2021), human welfare (Mills 2020), human health and planetary wellbeing (Jugwanth and Juneja 2025; Minkkinen and Puustinen 2023) for both present and future generations (Knudsen et al. 2023) of humans and nonhumans. Against this backdrop, ultimately, this paper has suggested how literary creativity and participatory foresight, including environmental education and collective intelligence, can be leveraged in sensitising and mobilising citizens and relevant stakeholders in shaping present environmental policy and co-creating sustainable futures for ecosystems and biodiversity, including royal and sacred animals, in Cameroon and the Congo Basin.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the School of International Futures (SOIF) through its Next Generation Foresight Practitioner (NGFP) Fellowship and the Seed Funding for the Cluster of Excellence Application for Sharing a Planet in Peril at the University of Cologne. The #CongoBasin and #RoyalAnimalsFutures foresight workshops could not have been organised without the financial assistance from these two institutions. I also express my gratitude to my NGFP Mentor Professor Sohail Inayatullah. I am particularly thankful to all the indigenous Kings (Fons) from the Grassfields Northwest Region of Cameroon who directly and indirectly took part in the #RoyalAnimalsFutures workshop. They include His Majesty Kevin Yakum (current Fon of Bambalang, former President of the Northwest House of Chiefs, and former Vice President of the Northwest Regional Assembly - NWRA), His Majesty Nfor Nkwi Amidu Nji (Fon of Nkambe, current President of the Northwest House of Chiefs and current Vice President of the NWRA), His Majesty Ndofoa Zofoa III (Fon of Babungo and current Secretary General of the NWRA), His Majesty Gilbert Njong III (Mbessa Fondom, and current member of the Northwest House of Chiefs and NWRA), His Majesty Ernest Ngum IV (Oku Fondom), His Majesty Joseph Ntang II (Din-Noni Fondom), His Majesty Peter Chuo Ketu (Ajung Fondom), His Majesty Wilson Ayo (Modele Fondom, and current member of the Northwest House of Chiefs and NWRA), His Majesty Yangsi Mbah (Akeh Fondom). The kings present at the workshops in Yaoundé were so impressed by our foresight workshop on the future of royal animals that they jointly awarded me the title of Fai/Nkfem Ntumfoyn, which means a Royal Ambassador and Minister. I am also grateful to Professor Fru Angwafo III (current President of the Northwest Regional Assembly, NWRA). In addition, I sincerely thank all the participants who generously and passionately took part in the participatory foresight workshops online and onsite in Leiden and Yaoundé. And I acknowledge Bibiana Ndum Nshom for assisting me to transcribe the workshop data from sticky notes and other papers. In addition, I am also grateful to the editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, I am very thankful to the Government of Dubai and the Dubai Future Foundation for honouring #CongoBasinFutures as the Winner of the inaugural edition of the Dubai Foresight Awards in the Foresight for the Planet category in 2025.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The research for the foresight component of this article received funding from the School of International Futures (SOIF) in the UK and the Sharing a Planet in Peril seed funding from the University of Cologne in Germany.
AI Disclosures
I partly relied on the AI called Writify.ai in creating thematic clusters based on the Futures Triangle notes and Recommendations from the #RoyalAnimalsFutures workshop conducted in Yaoundé.
