The 20th meeting of the parties to the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), concluded in Kinshasa on 5 June with several key recommendations: prepare a mobilisation strategy for post-2025; improve coordination of financing initiatives; build the capacity of countries to make best use of their natural resources, and create inclusive financial mechanisms attractive to private investment in sustainable forest management.
More than 700 stakeholders involved in preserving the Congo Basin forests attended, including ministers, senior officials from the Central African region, experts, development partners, civil society members and private sector representatives.
An African Development Bank Group delegation, assisted by German partners, was led by Al Hamndou Dorsouma, Division Head at the Bank's Department for Climate Change and Green Growth, organised several panels on strategies for creating innovative financing mechanisms more quickly.
One panel analysed financial commitments under the Glasgow Declaration 2021-25, where 12 countries and the Bezos Earth Fund pledged to mobilise $1.5 billion for forest protection and $1.7 billion to support indigenous peoples and local communities. The Fair Deal Task Force report, which proposes sustainable financing strategies for Central Africa's forest ecosystems, was also reviewed. The importance of ensuring the sustainability of financing in the Congo Basin was discussed and there was a call for a post-Glasgow commitment to the Congo Basin before COP 30.
Another panel focused on innovative financing mechanisms, highlighting the need for better coordination and transparency and for the adaptability of financing mechanisms to the Central African context. Charlotte Eyong, the Bank's Regional Officer for Climate Change and Green Growth for Central Africa, stressed the importance of better strategic planning in the countries concerned to make the most of existing funding to enable the integration of sustainable management of forests, biodiversity, ecosystems and the climate into their developing investment projects.
While several financial mechanisms exist in Central Africa, the panellists pointed out that their deployment remains limited and that private sector participation in financing forest protection is low. The panel recommended a focus on transparency and coordinating initiatives in the Congo Basin, encouraging ownership of initiatives and funding arrangements based on fair and equitable financing for Central Africa's forests.
Bernice Savy, the Bank's country economist for Gabon, presented other ways forward, including improving the business climate to boost private investment flows, building capacity in innovative climate financing mechanisms requiring specific expertise, using mixed financing, and designing bankable projects that can attract climate action investments to reduce financial risks and pre-investment costs.
Dorsouma emphasised the need to overcome the difficulties experiened by Congo Basin countries in accessing climate finance and highlighted sevearl innovative financing instruments -- payment for ecosystem services, mixed financing, debt-for-nature swaps, carbon markets and nature certificates, which are being deployed unevenly across the various tropical forest basins. He stressed the importance of more private sector investment in sustainable forest management in the Congo Basin.
Prosper Dodiko, Burundi's Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Livestock and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC), pointed to the reality of climate change and the need to find concrete solutions, stressing that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) needs to play a central part in them.
Concluding the event, the DRC Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Ève Bazaiba, called on all partners to honour their commitments to protect ecosystems. She stressed the importance of protecting the natural environement to ensure that humanity survived and of limiting the rise in average global temperature to 1.5° Celsius. She stressed that the Congo Basin countries must play their part in this crucial fight against climate change.
Organised in collaboration with the Central African Forest Commission, the Economic Community of Central African States, CBFP partners and the government of the DRC, was crucial for the fight against climate change and the protection of biodiversity.
