ATIBT co-facilitated the mobilization of the private sector of the timber sector to participate in the first meeting of the private sector college of Congo Basin Forest Partnership with the new facilitator Dr Christian Ruck and his team German Facilitation.

These efforts go hand in hand with ensuring continued responsible management of natural resources and preventing unsustainably and illegally sourced forest commodities. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, forest-monitoring organisations Observatoire de la Gouvernance Forestière (OGF) and Réseau des observateurs indépendants des ressources naturelles (RENOI) are set to carry out COVID awareness-raising in at-risk forest areas, and will also assess COVID’s impact on forest management and governance commitments under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI). Across the Congo Basin, fears that a proper lack of oversight may put forests and forest peoples in danger are looming despite emerging initiatives.

On the occasion of the World Biodiversity Day, this new PPI video proposes to illustrate this question of biodiversity conservation and the links with local economic development. It shows two testimonies, one of Alexis Kaboré (NATUDEV) who develops sustainable value chain of honey and shea butter in the PONASI complex in Burkina Faso and one of Caleb Ofori (Herp Ghana) who implements a national ecotourism project in the mountains of eastern Ghana.