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19.01.2024
In its latest newsletter, WWF France highlights the cost of sustainable forest management and calls for increased funding.
IMAGEO – ATIBT 2024
This letter echoes two topics that are particularly mobilizing the ATIBT at the start of 2024: innovative financing mechanisms, and advocacy to attract funding. Indeed, Kirsten Schuijt emphasizes that "to reverse the trend of deforestation and forest degradation, it is necessary to considerably increase forest financing (investments to help the transition, public-private partnerships, payments based on results...)." From this perspective, the role of companies, through their corporate social responsibility, can be decisive, provided that "projects are well designed and avoid common pitfalls, such as false compensation and lack of long-term viability". The projects and work carried out by the ATIBT are part of this innovative approach, as the stakes are crucial for certified forest managers: it is essential, now more than ever, to find the financial means to ensure the future of sustainable tropical forest management.
WWF France also presents its recently developed tools, and in particular a tool specifically dedicated to tropical forests: the Nature-Based Solutions (BbS) Origination Platform, created at global level and led by WWF-US. This initiative aims to create, structure, finance and implement nature-based solutions in tropical forests. Its objectives are to:
1. help bridge the gap between public or private contributions and the needs of foresters ;
2. develop high-quality projects that benefit the climate and biodiversity, and ensure credible and verifiable impacts;
3. increase the scale of projects (size, duration) to meet the challenges we face.
In addition, concerning the forests of the Congo Basin, WWF France launched a program in July 2023 designed to protect spaces and species in 4 African countries. Deployed in Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of Congo and Madagascar, the CIBEL (Conservation Inclusive de la Biodiversité et des Écosystèmes Locaux) program, which is supported by the French Agency of Development, aims to implement conservation measures while involving local communities, so that they can have socio-economic benefits. Activities in the Congo Basin will be located in a cross-border complex of forest protected areas, the Tri national Dja-Odzala-Minkébé area. The aim will be to set up community monitoring actions so that communities can participate in the monitoring of areas frequented by wildlife and in the fight against poaching. The problem of elephants will also be taken into account in order to mitigate conflicts with local populations.
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