Libreville, March 3. The international summit on forests One Forest Summit, sponsored by France and Gabon, called for a “fair agreement” between the international community and the major forest countries to reconcile environmental protection and economic development, reports this morning the French presidency.
The summit, which started on Wednesday, came to a close last night in the Gabonese capital, Libreville, with the help of French Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Gabonese President Ali Bongo, as well as leaders and representatives from other countries. of the whole world. , like the head of state of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang.
The meeting, which aimed to promote the protection of the main lungs of the planet, located in the Congo Basin, the Amazon and Southeast Asia, ended with the publication of the so-called Libreville Plan.
This plan calls for “a fair agreement between the international community, whose future depends on the preservation of carbon sinks and biodiversity, and forest countries, which legitimately wish to reconcile environmental ambition and economic prosperity for their populations”.
The agreement, according to the French presidency, is based on five fundamental pillars, including “political commitment”.
“We will not win the fight against climate change without tropical forests, which are one of the main carbon sinks on a planetary scale. There is an urgent need to stop and reverse deforestation by 2030”, warns the document.
The second pillar is based on “a principle of coexistence between man and nature”.
The third is “an environmental ambition that benefits people”, because “the protection of the forest is also an economic opportunity”, given that “the potential of the bioeconomy and the local and sustainable processing of forest products is immense”.
The fourth consists in “protecting what is vital”, such as certain reserves which deserve a high level of protection because their degradation would have irremediable consequences: this is the case of mangroves, peat bogs and certain primary forests which shelter the “umbrellas » “because they alone support the ecosystems (gorillas, orangutans, elephants, jaguars, etc.).
And the fifth pillar consists of “paying for the services provided to the rest of the world by forest countries”.
During this summit, Gabon, France and Canada launched an intergovernmental platform on the sustainable use of wood and biobased materials in construction, with the aim of replacing concrete and cement in the years to come and transform construction and urbanization strategies.
Nine countries have joined this coalition (Cambodia, Côte d’Ivoire, Republic of Congo, Uganda, United Kingdom, Zambia, France, Gabon and Canada).
Likewise, around 50 business leaders announced the 10by30 initiative, which aims to create ten million jobs in activities related to sustainable forest management by 2030.
In addition, scientists have promoted the “One Forest Vision” project, the objective of which is to better understand the value of these natural areas by mapping vital carbon reserves and global biodiversity in the next five years.
“Over the past thirty years, 220 million hectares of tropical forests have disappeared, which is equivalent to the total area of the Congo Basin,” Macron said Thursday at the summit.
“To preserve better, we must better understand (…), we must be able to develop an economic activity compatible with the objective of preservation”, underlined the French president.
For his part, Bongo recalled that “most of the tropical forests, one of the main support systems of life and the bank of biodiversity of our planet, are found in developing countries”.
However, underlined the Gabonese president, “these countries do not always have the means to manage and preserve them. The nations of the world must unite to develop an economic model to save the forests”.
France and Gabon announced the One Forest Summit during the COP27 climate summit in Egypt last November.