2023-10-26 20:00:00
Organized in the Congolese capital from October 26 to 28, can the summit of the Three Tropical Forest Basins keep all its promises? The question deserves to be asked when twelve years ago, around thirty countries in Africa, America and South-East Asia, belonging to the Congo, Amazon and Borneo basins- Mekong, had decided to unite in order to define a common strategy to preserve what remains of this lung of humanity, essential to climate regulation.
This Thursday, October 26, a new summit opened in Brazzaville bringing together the main countries of these three major global tropical forest basins to relaunch their collaboration. How to combat deforestation and implement sustainable development and conservation strategies? This is the whole purpose of this meeting in Brazzaville, which aspires to better collaboration between forest countries, but also displays a desire to accelerate North-South cooperation, while developing a common front within the framework of international negotiations on forests.
The meeting began with experts, before moving on Friday to ministerial level and Saturday to that of heads of state. According to the organizers, in addition to the summit host, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, several African presidents are expected (Kenya, Rwanda, Gabon, Togo, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros, etc.). But no head of state from the Amazon or Asia will make the trip, as in 2011. Many organizations, scientists and experts fear that the impact of this summit will be limited due to these notable absences.
Politically, Brazzaville hopes to consolidate its leading position in the battle for the survival of the tropical forest or at least to claim to push for South-South cooperation in this area.
What to expect
At the opening of the work, in a conference center in the suburbs of Brazzaville, the Congolese Minister of the Environment, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, detailed the participation: 145 official delegations, 18 international organizations, 427 NGOs, 123 representatives of the scientific community, 254 from youth, 326 from civil society and indigenous peoples, 354 from the private sector, as well as 14 heads of state or government.
“You came to Brazzaville to set in motion a historic movement and to initiate cooperation between our three basins that meets our responsibilities and the challenges facing us,” she declared.
Indeed, the three basins represent 80% of the world’s tropical forests and “three quarters of its biodiversity”, Ms Soudan-Nonault recently underlined, predicting “a very strong declaration of principle” for the Brazzaville summit. In 2011, the Congolese capital had already hosted a summit on the three tropical forest basins. The participants then promised, in a joint declaration, to cooperate to fight deforestation and to move towards a common front during the climate negotiations, but without creating a permanent structure for this as certain African countries wanted.
A common front for tropical forests
Meetings, summits and declarations have multiplied since then, but global deforestation has not stopped, far from it. In a report released Tuesday, a group of NGOs and researchers found that the world is failing to keep its promise to end and reverse the trend by 2030, estimating that some 6 .6 million hectares of forests had been lost worldwide in 2022, including a large part of primary forests in tropical regions.
The publication of this report, like the Brazzaville meeting, comes a few weeks before COP28, the United Nations international climate conference, scheduled for Dubai from November 30 to December 12. However, deforestation risks taking a back seat to discussions about renewable energy and the future of fossil fuels.
Forests are not only essential habitats for animal life, they are also important regulators of global climate and carbon sinks that absorb emissions from human activities.
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