Publication archive · 2026
Environmental-health assessment frameworks, drought forecasting, sustainable interventions and decision-support tools for communities and public institutions.
Table of contents
Each available record includes an accessible HTML notice and the supplied journal PDF.
Editorial · English
An editorial call to connect disaster-risk reduction, environmental education, public health and locally grounded resilience across Africa and other vulnerable regions.
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Methodological Framework · English
Context: Environmental health risks arise from interacting exposures, population vulnerability, and existing disease burden, yet these domains are often assessed separately. Objective: This paper proposes the Cumulative Environmental–Health Exposure Index (IEC-ES), a transparent composite framework designed to support territorial prioritization of public-health and environmental interventions. Framework: IEC-ES combines three dimensions environmental exposure (E), human vulnerability (V), and health burden (H). Indicators are selected for relevance, availability, comparability, and actionability, converted to a common 0-2 risk scale, aggregated within dimensions, and combined using explicit weights that sum to one. Equal weighting can be used as a baseline, while context-specific weights may be tested through sensitivity analysis. Illustrative application: In a generic urban example, harmonized 0–2 normalization yields an IEC-ES of approximately 1.25, corresponding to moderate risk. In a sanitation-focused comparison, a high-risk neighborhood (E=1.80, V=2.00, H=2.00) reaches 1.93, whereas a second neighborhood (E=1.00, V=1.00, H=0.75) reaches 0.92 and is therefore classified as moderate risk. Conclusion: IEC-ES offers a simple and interpretable structure for integrating heterogeneous environmental, social, and health information into a decision-support score. It should be used with component-level interpretation, transparent documentation of indicator choices, uncertainty analysis, and empirical validation before routine policy deployment.
Original Article · English
Background: Drought is one of the most complex and damaging hydroclimatic hazards, particularly in West Africa where water resources are highly sensitive to climate variability and change. This study analyzes the future evolution of meteorological, climatic, and hydrological droughts in the Gambia River basin controlled at the Kédougou gauging station in southeastern Senegal. Methods: The approach combines precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), temperature, and simulated streamflow, and computes the SPI, SPEI, and SSI at 1-, 3-, 6-, and 12-month timescales. Results: Results reveal a major contrast between the precipitation signal and thermo-hydrological responses. Under SSP5-8.5, mean temperature increases from 29.67 °C in 2021–2040 to 33.99 °C in 2081–2100, annual PET rises from 1,574 to 1,770 mm, and mean streamflow decreases from 49.02 to 12.45 m³/s. Mean SSI-3 simultaneously deteriorates from −1.21 to −1.94, while the frequency of drought months increases from 67.5% to 91.7% and that of extreme drought months from 35.4% to 84.2%. Under SSP1-2.6, drying remains substantial but is less monotonic. Eight forecasting models are compared at 1-, 3-, and 6-month lead times: Random Forest, ExtraTrees, XGBoost, LightGBM, SVR, MLP/ANN, LSTM, and GRU. LightGBM performs best at one month (NSE = 0.867 under SSP1-2.6 and 0.718 under SSP5-8.5), whereas LSTM/GRU become competitive at longer lead times. Conclusion: The study highlights a risk of chronic hydrological drought by the end of the century, particularly under high emissions, and demonstrates the value of multimodel forecasting for early warning and adaptive water-resources management.
Original Article · English
Woody plant resources play a central role in the food, energy, and health needs of rural populations in the Sudano-Sahelian zone, yet they remain increasingly threatened by anthropogenic pressure and deforestation. An ethnobotanical study was conducted among the local ethnic groups of the eastern part of the Benoué riverbank (Bibemi and Rey-Bouba districts, North Region, Cameroon) to characterize the diversity and patterns of use of exploited woody plant resources, with a view to identifying priority species for conservation and promotion in agroforestry practices. Surveys were carried out in 20 villages among 328 respondents selected using a non-probabilistic quota method based on gender and age; species use was assessed through the response rate of solicited plant organs. Farmers accounted for 80.45% of respondents, reflecting the predominantly agricultural character of the study area. A total of 72 exploited woody species were recorded, distributed across six main use categories: food (28 species valued for their fruit, 7 for leaves and flowers, and 5 for seeds; cited by 88.22% of respondents), fuelwood and charcoal (28 species; 98.48% of respondents), traditional medicine (38 species, most notably Khaya senegalensis and Faidherbia albida), service wood (26 species), fodder, and handicrafts (32.22% of respondents). These uses draw on a wide range of plant organs, including leaves, roots, fruit, seeds, flowers, wood and bark. Use intensity varied markedly between species and use categories, reflecting differing availability and cultural preference. These findings highlight the diversity and socio-economic importance of woody resources for local livelihoods and underscore the need for targeted conservation of the most heavily exploited species in this zone.
Original Article · English
This study assessed suppression measures for managing technological multi-hazards at international airports in Kenya. A descriptive research design was adopted, involving a sample of 285 airport workers selected through stratified random sampling, comprising 226 respondents from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) and 59 from Moi International Airport (MIA). Primary data were collected using questionnaires, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), observation checklists, and structured interview protocols. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including means, frequencies, and percentages, and inferential statistics using the Chi-square test, while qualitative data were analyzed descriptively. The findings on structural suppression measures indicated no statistically significant association between variations in airport facilities and the presence of suppression measures. Specifically, the Chi-square results were χ²(2) = 2.81, p = .246 for critical airport facilities and fire suppression systems; χ²(2) = 0.49, p = .783 for terminal buildings and fire sprinkler systems; and χ²(2) = 0.83, p = .659 for ground refuelling operations and the use of portable foam extinguishers. Regarding non-structural suppression measures, more than 70% of respondents acknowledged the existence of policies governing fire suppression systems and fire suppression agents at the airports. The study recommends transitioning from portable fluorinated firefighting foams to environmentally sustainable alternatives, implementing effective measures for managing legacy fluorinated foam stocks, improving sprinkler coverage in critical areas, and strengthening environmental monitoring, auditing, and compliance mechanisms to enhance fire safety and environmental sustainability at international airports in Kenya.
Original Article · French
Contexte : La production avicole joue un rôle essentiel dans la sécurité alimentaire au Cameroun, mais elle est fortement affectée par le stress thermique lié aux conditions climatiques tropicales. Méthodes : Cette étude a évalué les effets du stress thermique chronique (35 °C) et aigu (40 °C) sur le comportement, les performances zootechniques et les paramètres hématologiques du poulet de chair. Un total de 150 poulets Cobb 500 âgés de 30 jours a été réparti en trois groupes : un lot témoin, un lot soumis à un stress chronique pendant quatre jours et un lot exposé à un stress aigu pendant une journée. Résultats : Le stress thermique a induit d’importantes modifications comportementales, notamment une diminution de l’activité, un halètement et un abaissement des ailes, traduisant une altération du bien-être. Sur le plan zootechnique, une baisse significative du poids vif (12,56 %) a été observée chez les sujets soumis au stress chronique, accompagnée d’une augmentation de la consommation d’eau et de la fréquence respiratoire.
Original Article · English
Mechanical recycling is often assumed, rather than demonstrated, to deliver a net environmental benefit relative to virgin plastic production, particularly in Sub-Saharan African contexts where primary process data are scarce. This study quantifies that benefit for food-grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) produced at mid-scale in Cameroon, using the European Commission’s Circular Footprint Formula (CFF) applied to a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA; ISO 14040/14044) of the Opur and Supermont mineral-water bottle streams recycled at Ecogreen Sarl, Douala. Primary inventory data were obtained from a 90-day, three-shift production campaign combining calibrated mass, electricity and water metering; a parallel material flow analysis (MFA) established a mass-balance closure. The Environmental Footprint (EF) 3.1 method, implemented in openLCA with ecoinvent v3.10 background data, characterised the gate-to-gate process impact at 186 kg CO2-eq per tonne of food-grade rPET pellets. Applying the CFF converted this process impact into an effective, credit-adjusted climate-change footprint of approximately 1,600 kg CO2-eq per tonne, corresponding to an avoided impact of 27.2% relative to a linear baseline of virgin production plus landfilling. Comparable avoided impacts were obtained for acidification (28.4%), fossil resource use (29.8%) and particulate matter (27.0%), while human toxicity indicators showed a net increase (-5.8% for cancer effects, -21.2% for non-cancer effects) attributable to ancillary chemical and energy inputs. Freshwater eutrophication and ecotoxicity, driven by wastewater treatment, and climate change and fossil-resource depletion, driven by electricity and diesel-fuelled thermal energy, dominated the normalised impact profile. Material flow analysis identified oversized 10-litre bottles as the single largest documented loss pathway at the flake-production stage (8.3% of PET bottle feed), a design-process mismatch rather than a contamination problem. A ceteris-paribus parametric sensitivity analysis, holding the recycling-process impact, end-of-life recycling rate, allocation factor and quality ratios fixed, shows the CFF-derived climate benefit increasing monotonically with the input recycled-content rate above the 25% baseline; because this response is a mathematical property of the CFF equation rather than independently tested evidence of technical feasibility, it is presented as a policy-relevant scenario rather than a demonstrated ceiling. Uncertainty was propagated through 10,000 Monte-Carlo iterations for the recycling-process inventory. Subject to these caveats, the results indicate that the CFF, parameterised with primary process data, provides a policy-relevant quantification of circularity benefit even where recycling operates below the collection and technology standards of mature economies, and that recycled-content policy, alongside process-level efficiency improvement, remains an influential lever for improving the environmental return of food-grade PET recycling in Cameroon.
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