International summit in Congo mulls future of tropical forests
The meeting of experts got underway in the Republic of Congo's capital, and will move on to the ministerial level on Friday.
Heads of state will hold talks in Brazzaville on Saturday.
Organisers say leaders from several African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Gabon, Togo, Guinea-Bissau and the Comoros, are expected to attend as well as summit host Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
However no heads of state from Amazon nations or Asia will be making the trip.
Congolese environment minister Arlette Soudan-Nonault opened the summit at a conference centre on the outskirts of Brazzaville, welcoming hundreds of environmentalists, scientists, campaign groups, political leaders and representatives of international organisations.
"You have come to Brazzaville to set in motion a historic movement and to initiate cooperation between our three basins that matches our responsibilities and the challenges we face," she said.
The meeting participants have gathered to discuss the ecosystems of the Congo Basin, the Amazon and Borneo-Mekong-Southeast Asia Basin.
The three great forest basins account for 80 percent of the world's tropical forests and "three quarters of its biodiversity," Soudan-Nonault recently told the press.
She predicted that the Congo-Brazzaville summit would produce "a very strong declaration of principle," aimed at "perpetuating" the valued resources of the three great basins.
- Deforestation threat -
Brazzaville hosted the first such summit in 2011, when participants signed a declaration promising to cooperate in the fight against deforestation and to take a common line in climate negotiations.
But this did not lead to the creation of any permanent structure or impetus, as some African countries had hoped.
Since then there have been various meetings, summits and declarations but deforestation has not stopped.
In a report published on Tuesday, NGOs and researchers found that the world was failing to keep its promise to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, with the global loss of forest area increasing last year.
Forests are not only key habitats for animal life but serve as important regulators of the global climate and act as carbon sponges that suck in the emissions human activity belches out.
However, deforestation in 2022 was over 20 percent higher than it should have been to meet the leaders' pledge, with 6.6 million hectares (16.3 million acres) of forest lost, much of it primary forest in tropical regions.
The assessment, overseen by more than two dozen environmental groups and research organisations, also warns that forest degradation remains a huge problem.
Degradation refers to a wide range of harms, including wildfires and biodiversity loss, which affect a forest's overall health.
The publication of this report, like the Brazzaville meeting, comes ahead of COP28, the United Nations climate conference, which world leaders will attend in Dubai from November 30 to December 12.
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