From international commitments to local implementation: the justiciability gap in household waste governance in Cameroon

Sustainable development has emerged as a central paradigm of public policy, aiming to integrate environmental, economic, and social goals. Global waste-management reforms increasingly combine climate objectives, circular-economy strategies, and public-private implementation, but the enforceability of these commitments remains uneven, particularly in developing countries such as Cameroon. This study examines whether the formal adoption of international environmental norms (such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, and Nationally Determined Contributions) has produced effective and locally appropriated institutional innovations in Cameroon’s household waste sector. The central hypothesis is that formal legal adoption has outpaced domestic enforceability, institutional capacity, financing, and social appropriation. To test this, a qualitative documentary review was conducted using a dual approach of legal sociology and positivist legal analysis. A purposively selected corpus of documents published between 1992 and 2026 was analysed, encompassing international environmental conventions, Cameroonian legislation, national policy instruments, institutional reports, and climate governance records. The document search strategy focused on waste governance and climate mechanisms, applying specific eligibility criteria to isolate relevant normative, legal, and policy texts. These texts were classified into analytical categories covering norm integration, operational enforceability, local social embedding, and operational performance in Yaoundé and Douala, followed by thematic synthesis. The findings reveal four key results: international norms and greenhouse gas mitigation targets have been successfully incorporated into Cameroon’s national environmental policy framework; despite this formal inclusion, the resulting duties are predominantly programmatic rather than directly enforceable legal obligations, thereby limiting judicial review and accountability; practical implementation and waste treatment infrastructure in urban centres remain severely constrained by technical, financial, operational, and institutional weaknesses; and participatory governance combined with economically viable circular-economy models offers the most promising route forward to align international commitments with local socio-economic realities. The principal contribution of the study is to demonstrate that the effectiveness of waste-management institutional innovation depends on the interaction between legal justiciability, implementation capacity and economic viability, rather than on formal legal incorporation alone. These conclusions offer valuable insights for developing nations where international environmental commitments are adopted faster than domestic implementation capacity develops.