Award-winning Cameroonian environmental and human rights activist Nasako Besingi is in detention at an disclosed location...The Yaoundé Centre for Environment and Development (CED) confirmed that Mr Besingi was arrested on Monday in his native Mundemba in the English-speaking Southwest. Mr Besingi is the founder and director of the Struggle to Economise the Future Environment (SEFE). There has been a surge in arrests of Anglophone activists in Cameroon, but it was not clear whether Mr Besingi’s apprehension was connected to the ongoing Anglophone crisis...The activist has been a frontline campaigner against the setting up of a large-scale palm oil plantation in the Southwest by American agro-industrial firm, Herakles Farms. Operating through its subsidiary Sithe Global Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SG-SOC), the firm acquired a 99-year land lease of 73,086 hectares in 2009 for the palm oil project...Following fierce opposition by local and international activists, the lease contract was reviewed by a presidential decree in 2013 and the concession was reduced to about 20,000 hectares. Mr Besingi has been arrested several times since the launch of the project because of his denunciation of violations of the law by the agro industrial firm...Local and international campaigners, including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund said the project was in a densely forested area bordering five natural reserves and could result in dire consequences for the livelihoods of thousands of local inhabitants and for the global climate. “The project site is located in the Guinean forest of West Africa Biodiversity Hotspot, which shelters 1,800 endemic species of vascular plants and an exceptional diversity of the world’s top species priorities for primate conservation,” said Greenpeace Africa.