Emmanuel Macron
Climate love
Climate love
“If we lose the Congo basin forest, we lose the fight against climate change”
A summit on how to protect the world’s largest forests underway in Gabon is set to be dominated by the issue of who pays for the protection and reforesting of lands that are home to some of the world’s most diverse species and contribute to limiting planet-warming emissions. French president Emmanuel Macron and officials and environment ministers from around the world are attending the One Forest Summit this week in the capital Libreville to discuss maintaining the world’s major rainforests.
Macron and his Gabonese counterpart Ali Bongo Ondimba hope the summit will nevertheless encourage solidarity between the world’s three major tropical forests in the Amazon, the Congo Basin and in southeast Asia, where some countries say that protecting the forests needs to be profitable.
“Finance has not materialized at the necessary scale,” said Simo Kilepa, Papua New Guinea’s environment minister on Wednesday evening. “We need to be able to generate revenue from the protection of wild forests.”
The summit in Gabon follows disagreements over cash for protecting forests at the United Nations’ biodiversity summit in Montreal last December.
Congo made a last-minute objection to the now-approved framework, urging for rich, industrialized nations to pay lower-income countries to help protect forests. Congo’s calls were dismissed on a legal technicality. The country is sending a reduced delegation to Gabon.
Key environmental groups led by Global Witness are also piling pressure on France to exert its influence and rein in major European banks accused of financing deforestation.
A report released on the margins of the summit called for funding for to protect nature and safeguard Indigenous peoples and local communities. The Global Environment Facility and the International Institute for Environment and Development suggested that “biodiversity-positive carbon credits,” where corporations and governments are paid for conservation efforts, could boost ambitions.
In Africa, protected areas and forests continue to bear increasing pressure from the competing interests of economic infrastructure development needs, environmental protection demands and climate action. “Biodiversity and climate change are essentially one and the same problem,” said marine scientist David Obura. “They must be resolved together and the financial flows to each must be integrated and made dual-purpose.”


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12 w
This is good but I just hope there are no ulterior motives behind this since if the French government cares much, they should first refrain and retract from the EACOP project that's wrecking havoc in forests, mangrove areas, rich agricultural lands, biodiversity among others across Tanzania and Uganda.
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11 w
@peter_kamau true
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12 w
Time for climate actions and less boardroom meetings.
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12 w
The world should join to save and protect all these forests in their best way possible,without complains that A will benefit more than B, especially the leaders should lead by showing actions
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12 w
Truly sad to hear that European banks are funding deforestation in the Congo basin. It has to stop!
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12 w
Very true and really worth supporting the Congolese people in protecting itđź’š
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12 w
This is something that they ought to have done long time ago
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12 w
@zelda_ninga_442 Sure.
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12 w
It is encouraging to see world leaders coming together to discuss the importance of protecting the world's largest forests. It is essential that we find a way to finance the protection and reforestation of these forests, which are home to some of the world's most diverse species and play a crucial role in mitigating climate change.