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    Reconciling forest preservation and development

    In addition to their ecological and social value, tropical rainforest ecosystems help combat climate change via environmental services such as CO2 sequestration or water regulation. AFD, in line with France’s position, has consequently pledged to support the inclusion of tropical rainforests in the future climate agreement via the REDD finance mechanism.

    The aim of AFD’s operations in the forest sector is to apply an environmental standard for forest exploitation via a “sustainable development plan”, which includes forest, ecological and social components. AFD’s objective is to demonstrate that sustainable forest management and the development of national economies are compatible.

    Forest preservation and combating climate change

    Although tropical rainforests only represent 7% of land mass, they concentrate over 50% of the planet’s biodiversity and suffer from intense degradation and deforestation which affects an area of over 7 million hectares every year.

    Moreover, deforestation causes roughly 20% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, nearly all of which originate from developing countries. In the face of this situation, for the past two years the international community has been negotiating a finance mechanism for the reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), in the framework of the future climate agreement that will be negotiated from 7 to 18 December 2009 in Copenhagen.
     

    What is a sustainable development plan?

    AFD considers that forest protection and exploitation complement rather than conflict with each other: the challenge is to reconcile the preservation of natural areas and economic development by giving priority to sustainable forest management.

    A sustainable development plan involves all stakeholders: forest operators, local populations, public authorities, service companies, banks and aid agencies. The aim is to strike a compromise between these actors’ different interests by combining the creation of protected areas with the sustainable development of the exploited forests. This leads to forest exploitation being planned over several decades and a tool being designed to support decision-making for the industrial project relating to the developed forest.
     

    AFD and Forests

    For the past 15 years, AFD and the French Global Environment Facility (French GEF) have been supporting sustainable forest exploitation in Central African countries which house the second largest tropical rainforest after Amazonia. This support has mainly focused on the sustainable management of forest exploitation concessions in Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, and CAR.

    AFD and French GEF financing has supported the creation of development plans for the sustainable management of over 15 million hectares representing 40% of forests that are either developed or are in the process of being so.

    AFD has recently implemented and studied financing for sustainable forest management in other regions, particularly in Brazil and Indonesia. In these countries, AFD is participating – alongside its Japanese counterpart – in the implementation of a national climate plan via 500 million dollars of financing in two tranches: USD200M in 2008 and USD300M in 2009. Find out more These countries are also benefiting from French GEF financing for sustainable forest management, particularly in the Brazilian Amazon.

    See Forest/Climate projects