During COP27 in Egypt last November, Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Ali Bongo announced that a summit on the preservation of tropical forests would be held in Libreville, Gabon. The One Forest Summit will take place on March 1 and 2, 2023. Objective: to remobilize political attention around the safeguarding of these forests, threatened by deforestation and overexploitation. And relaunch North-South cooperation.
During these two days of summits, Heads of State and Government, scientists, environmental NGOs, financial institutions and business leaders will meet. In short, all the actors involved in the preservation of tropical forests.
Emphasis must be placed on the forests of the Congo Basin with the ambition of arriving at new commitments and concrete progress for:
- combine preservation and exploitation of forests and ensure that the benefits go to the local population
- improving knowledge and scientific cooperation
- increase access to international funding and find new ideas for funding forest conservation.
And on this sensitive issue of funding, the countries of the North, which are the ones that pollute the most, will have to show creativity to regain the confidence of the countries of the South which still have vast natural areas which capture large quantities of atmospheric CO2. .
For years, financial aid has been promised at COPs on climate change, but it hasn’t been delivered.
Biodiversity and climate protection
One of the particularities of this One Forest Summit is to combine protection of the climate and biodiversity. Two subjects often addressed separately, while they are intimately linked, recalls Anne Raimat, biodiversity director of the Climate Chance association.
These are 2 subjects which are closely linked and which have interactions between them. When we restore an ecosystem, we not only restore biodiversity, but we also have positive effects on the climate. And when the climate deteriorates, well, it also degrades the ecosystems and the biodiversity they shelter.
Anne Raimat, biodiversity director of the Climate Chance association