With just months to go before construction of a hydroelectric dam gets underway along Cameroon's Lom river, environmentalists are raising concerns about the initiative. "While laudable, the Lom project in its present form could accelerate the decline in living standards of local populations," Dieudonné Thang, executive secretary of Global Village Cameroon, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the capital of Yaoundé, told the Inter Press Service.