The UN hopes a new treaty signed by African governments, industry representatives and civil society organisations this week will slow levels of illegal timber trading in the Congo Basin.
The Brazzaville Declaration marks the latest effort by the international community to slow the destruction of Africa’s rainforests.
Backed by the governments of the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon, the agreement focuses on boosting transparency, forest governance and timber tracking.
Covering an area of 300 million hectares, the Congo Basin harbours the world’s second largest tropical forest, but the UN estimates net forest loss is around 700,000 hectares a year.
The agreement recognises the “importance of the forestry sector in the socio-economic development and its contribution to food security and nutrition on the one hand and its role in the preservation of the global climate and biodiversity conservation on the other.”
Recent research shows that Congo Basin tree species are larger in stature on average than their Amazon counterparts, suggesting the African rainforest may be a larger carbon storehouse and a crucial resource for productive and sustainable forest management.
WWF says up to a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and forest degradation.
Trees in the Congo Basin are also a major source of illegal timber, part of a global trade that costs governments around $10 billion per year in lost tax revenues worldwide.
Simon Counsell, executive director of campaign group Rainforest Foundation UK described the agreement as an 'important step’, but argued it needs to be more ambitious.
For the complete article, please see Responding to Climate Change.
Resource consumption has grown exponentially over the past: between 1970 and 2010, the quantity of extracted materials has tripled. Not only the overall amount of resources extracted and consumed has risen rapidly, but also the diversity of resources has grown. While half a century ago, only a few materials such as wood, brick, iron, copper, and plastics were in high demand worldwide, today products are more complex and require a wide range of materials.
Times of war can result in rapid environmental degradation as people struggle to survive and environmental management systems break down resulting in damage to critical ecosystems. For over six decades, armed conflicts have occurred in more than two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity hotspots thus posing critical threats to conservation efforts. [...]
More than 4,700 delegates, including environment ministers, scientists, academics, business leaders and civil society representatives, met in Nairobi for the UN Environment Assembly, the world’s top environmental body whose decisions will set the global agenda, notably ahead of the UN Climate Action Summit in September.
Mid february, the EU's foreign affairs ministers welcomed the Commission’s strategic long-term vision for a climate neutral Europe. Ministers also called for urgent and decisive action to strengthen the global response on climate change and restated the EU’s determination to lead the way on accelerated climate action on all fronts.