The countries of the Congo Basin had one goal when they arrived in Libreville: to unite to weigh more. During the two days that the work lasted, March 1st and 2nd, ministers and experts, then the Heads of State, worked to put into practice a concerted approach, particularly in the carbon market. Make no mistake, the Libreville meeting was not intended to give rise to major decisions. These have already been agreed at previous COPs. The Gabonese One Forest Summit was presented as a place to seek policy harmonization for greater monitoring and better monitoring of explore/preserve policy.
Several decisions were taken under the “Libreville Plan”: an initiative to protect carbon and biodiversity reserves with a budget of 100 million euros, a scientific project to map biodiversity reserves was launched and a business strategy was defined that aims to create 10 million jobs.
But the main challenge, “is to reach a common position vis-à-vis industrialized countries that do not intend to deindustrialize in order to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In return, it is a matter of encouraging them to put their hand in their pockets to help us preserve the forests of the Congo Basin”, explains biologist Christian Mbina.
The Congo Basin is the main lung of our planet. It now absorbs more greenhouse gases than the Amazon; absorption by its peatlands represents the equivalent of almost three years of global emissions; Gabon absorbs the equivalent of a third of France's greenhouse gas emissions; the Republic of Congo alone absorbs 1.5% of global emissions. Thus, this forest can generate considerable resources for the countries on which it depends for its still little explored carbon credit potential. Hence the launch of the “One Forest vision” project to accurately map carbon and biodiversity reserves in five years.
An ill-secured carbon market
For now, the buying and selling process is carried out in a less secure market. So far, it's every man for himself. Each forestry country individually negotiates the placing on the market of its stocks of carbon credits (a unit equivalent to one ton of sequestered or avoided C02). States transact directly or through agencies government responsible for reselling these credits. Gabon, for example, managed to have 90 million tons of carbon credits validated last November, during COP 27 in Egypt, by the United Nations Climate Convention.
Lee White, Gabon's Environment Minister, explains: “So if the price of one unit is $14, that means Gabon expects $1.26 billion for 90 million carbon credits in transit. issuance on the market, i.e. 773.39 billion CFA francs. The bonds were transferred to the Gabon Strategic Investment Fund (FGIS), responsible for negotiating the sale. At the forefront of the matter, Gabon in June 2021 obtained Norwegian financing of 17 million dollars (9.3 billion CFA francs) in exchange for its carbon sequestration efforts between 2016 and 2017.
One of the questions raised in the March 1 communications was how to defend this natural capital. “Carbon credit is just paper. You still need to set the price. From this point of view, I was dissatisfied because it is not yet clearly defined”, complains Joseph Dzou, a Cameroonian financier. Without major announcements, the summit should, however, constitute a decisive step in raising awareness among forestry countries, particularly those in the Congo Basin. In fact, the urgency of the situation forces them to find a development model that allows them to preserve their forest cover. All experts agree that this required that public policies be coherent and that all countries work towards he ate goal.
