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The first week of the Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Change Conference concluded with the closing plenaries of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). Substantive conclusions were adopted on a limited number of issues, mostly related to the consideration of reports by constituted bodies and to reporting. On many issues, only procedural conclusions were adopted which noted that further work is required to finalize the relevant decisions.
COP
Long-term finance: In informal consultations, co-facilitated by Carlos Fuller (Belize), parties welcomed the co-facilitators’ draft text, circulated the previous night along with a compilation of submissions and inputs received. They requested further streamlining of the text, including by using decision text from previous years.
Developing countries highlighted as important areas, inter alia, concern over gaps in fulfillment of pledges and between needs and delivery, and a common definition of climate finance. They also called for using agreed language and terminology, opposing, among others, references to “parties” and “donors,” noting the provision of finance is not a donation but a commitment. Many developing countries also opposed references to the Progress Report on the Climate Finance Delivery Plan, saying it comes from outside the UNFCCC process.
Developed and developing countries diverged on whether to mandate the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) to prepare an annual report on the delivery of the USD 100 billion goal, with developed countries noting the reporting cycle under the Paris Agreement’s Enhanced Transparency Framework is biennial. In response to some developing countries opposing references to Paris Agreement Article 2.1(c) (on consistency of finance flows), two groups stated that an agreement had been reached in ministerial discussions in Glasgow to have an agenda item on this article, while recognizing that this item is not the right place for discussing this.
Discussions will continue in the second week, based on a co-facilitators’ revised draft text.
CMA
New collective quantified goal on climate finance: In informal consultations, Co-Facilitators Zaheer Fakir (South Africa) and Georg Børsting (Norway) shared that a compilation of parties’ submissions and in-session inputs for draft decision text had been made available, and invited comments on the co-facilitators’ proposed structure for the draft decision, including: past decisions; stocktake of progress; procedural elements, such as working modalities, participation, and submissions; and substantive elements, such as themes and topics to be addressed, and guidance for the high-level ministerial dialogue.
Parties expressed support for the proposed structure and mandated the co-facilitators to prepare a first draft decision text.
Developing countries underscored, inter alia: calling on developed countries to accelerate delivery of their finance goals; the level of the new goal; principles of the Convention; public and grant-based finance; balance between adaptation and mitigation finance; and transparency and accounting arrangements for tracking delivery.
Countries diverged on whether to agree on the modalities for the work programme under this item for 2023 only or also 2024. One identified a decision on the themes of the technical expert dialogues (TEDs) as an area requiring time in the second week.
Most parties agreed on the need to make the ministerial dialogues more interactive and focused on delivering political guidance for the technical process under the work programme. Others called for also revising the format of the TEDs to be more outcome-oriented.
Discussions will continue in the second week, based on the co-facilitators’ draft text.
COP/CMA
Matters relating to the Standing Committee on Finance: In informal consultations, Co-Facilitators Janine Felson (Belize) and Dominic Molloy (UK) invited parties to reflect on a text based on a compilation of submissions and inputs, shared earlier in the day. Parties reflected on paragraphs relating to: the Fifth Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate Finance Flows; Paris Agreement Article 2.1(c); and climate finance definitions. Parties called for the co-facilitators to further streamline the text, including by removing duplication.
On the Biennial Assessment, parties shared views on elements and data, including quantitative information, to be highlighted in the decision. Some groups called for also referencing non-Paris Agreement aligned flows. Some called for referencing the recommendations from the SCF report (FCCC/CP/2022/8/Add.1−FCCC/PA/CMA/2022/7/Add.1).
Noting challenges relating to the SCF’s draft guidance for the Financial Mechanism’s operating entities, one developed country suggested removing this element from the Committee’s terms of reference. A developing country group opposed, calling for requesting the SCF instead to improve engagement with parties.
On Article 2.1(c), many called for a space for a dedicated discussion. Two developing country groups opposed references to the SCF’s mapping and synthesis of views, arguing they are not representative of all parties’ views and stressing the Article must be interpreted in the broader context of the Paris Agreement. One developing country group reiterated that it wishes to elevate the discussion on finance definitions to the political level.
Discussions will continue in the second week on the basis of a revised co-facilitators’ draft text.
Matters Relating to Funding Arrangements Responding to Loss and Damage Associated with the Adverse Effects of Climate Change, Including a Focus on Addressing Loss and Damage: In informal consultations, co-facilitated by Ursula Fuentes (Germany), several developing country groups reiterated their call to establish a finance facility for loss and damage at COP 27/CMA 4 and set out a clear roadmap to ensure its full operationalization by 2024. Several also suggested establishing an ad hoc committee to guide the operationalization process, noting the need to give it a clear mandate and timeline, decide on its composition and modalities of work, and ensure sufficient budgetary provisions.
Several developed countries reiterated their acknowledgment of funding gaps, the diversity of challenges related to loss and damage, and the urgency to address the matter. They emphasized: building on existing initiatives; welcoming announcements of support; examining issues at the regional level; and prioritizing support for those most vulnerable.
Many envisioned the Glasgow Dialogue to provide the space to discuss specific issues, including slow-onset events, rapid response, the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs), and debt relief. One developing country group recalled similar work done over the past decade, pointing among others to extensive work done by the SCF.
Fuentes invited parties to share written versions of statements made during the session, noting these will be published on the UNFCCC website. Building on the views expressed by parties, the co-facilitators will prepare an overview of elements to be included in the decisions to be taken at COP 27/CMA 4.
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The meeting between the CBFP Facilitator of the Federal Republic of Germany, Honorable Dr. Christian Ruck, and the members of the College of International NGOs of the CBFP took place this Tuesday, March 7, 2023, without taboos and with an open heart.
On Wednesday, February 8 at 15.00 CET (Berlin, Brussels, Kinshasa Time) on MS Team, the partners and co-leaders of the Eastern Block of the follow-up of the implementation of the N'Djaména Declaration on Transhumance held their first coordination meeting of the year 2023. This meeting followed the meeting of the Central block on Tuesday, January 31, 2023.
On Wednesday, March 8, at 3:00 p.m. (Yaoundé time) on MS Team, in anticipation of the end of the German CBFP Facilitation scheduled for July 2023, and with a view to preparing the handover from the German Facilitation to the France-Gabon Co-Facilitation, the Facilitator of the Federal Republic of Germany, Honorable Dr. Christian Ruck, held a meeting with the members of the Intergovernmental College and Multilateral Institutions of the CBFP.
Bujumbura, March 14, 2023, The CBFP Facilitator from the Federal Republic of Germany, Honorable Dr. Christian Ruck, took the floor at the 11th Ordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC), held from March 14 to 17, 2023 in Bujumbura, Burundi. The council was organized by COMIFAC in close collaboration with the Burundian Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, and with the financial support of the German cooperation through the GIZ project.
Bujumbura, Burundi, March 17, 2023 - The opening of the ministerial segment of the eleventh COMIFAC Council of Ministers was marked by the handover ceremony of the Chairmanship between the Republic of Cameroon, outgoing Chair, and the Republic of Burundi, incoming Chair, represented by Pr Sanctus NIRAGIRA, Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Livestock of the Republic of Burundi in the presence of the Prime Minister, Head of Government Lieutenant General Gervais NDIRAKOBUCA, Heads of Institutions, Ambassadors of COMIFAC member countries, technical and financial partners, regional and international organizations, and the business community.
On Wednesday, 1st of March 2023 from 12:00 to 13:30, the strategy meeting of the international coalition "Biodiversity Corridors in Africa" took place during the One Forest Summit. Please download below the minutes in English and French.
Bujumbura, Republic of Burundi, March 14, 2023 - The experts' segment of the 11th session of the Council of Ministers of the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) was opened by Prof. Sanctus NIRAGIRA, Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock of the Republic of Burundi.
The Wildlife Conservation Society Central African Republic Program is deeply saddened by the death of Mr. Éric Rama Doungous, Ecoguard team leader and head of the Base Vie location in Bamingui. He died Monday, March 20, after he and his team, on patrol in the western sector of Bamingui-Bangoran National Park, were ambushed by armed bandits.
Bujumbura, Republic of Burundi, March 13-14, 2023 - The sub-regional workshop on the results of the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended today.
Organized by KfW on the occasion of the mission in Yaounde of the CBFP Facilitator of the Federal Republic of Germany, Honorable Dr. Christian Ruck, this meeting was in line with the meetings of the Consultation Circle of MINFOF and MINEPDED Partners (CCPM), whose activities were re-launched after a slowdown due mainly to the COVID crisis. It took place on Tuesday, January 25, 2022 at Hotel La Falaise in Yaoundé, still within the framework of the visit of the CBFP facilitator to Cameroon.
"Since March 1, 2023, the United Kingdom has taken over the chairmanship of the Central African Forest Initiative, CAFI, following Germany. The UK's new role in CAFI follows on from the work done at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, which highlighted the importance of the Congo Basin.
As the world races to mitigate global warming, agricultural expansion generally characterized by the practice of slash and burn has been identified as the topmost driver of deforestation that leads to carbon emission in the world’s largest carbon sink. In a new report titled Congo Basin Forests – State of the Forests 2021 produced by the Central Africa Forest Observatory (OFAC), experts say population growth puts fresh pressure on the forests of Central Africa and consequently reduce carbon stock as thousands of arrival of agrarian households into forest areas leads to clearing to establish farmlands. The experts also listed logging, territorial development, land use, governance and need for energy as other factors driving deforestation.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH have signed an agreement with the Government of Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) for a USD 79.3 million project (USD 35.2 million in GCF financing), to address a much-needed transition to the climate resilient management of forests and landscapes at scale.
GCF and the World Bank have signed an instrumental legal agreement to rapidly begin implementing the second phase of a renewable energy facility. It will support nine countries in meeting their NDC commitments while increasing access to electricity for the most vulnerable populations. The mitigation/adaptation cross-cutting Facility aims to also increase the reliability of the grid infrastructure, improving the country’s economic resilience, and the resilience of vulnerable households to better adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change.
On 5 January 2023, during the ceremony to present New Year’s greetings to the President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou N’Guesso reiterated the announcement he had made at the 27th United Nations Climate Conference (COP27) in Egypt. In his capacity as president of the Congo Basin Climate Commission, he announced that the summit of the world’s three major forest basins would be held in Brazzaville in June 2023. The Congo Basin in Central Africa, the Amazon Basin in South America and the Borneo Mekong Basin in Southeast Asia.
Bujumbura, Republic of Burundi, March 17, 2023, under the high patronage of His Excellency Major Evariste NDAYISHIMIYE, President of the Republic, Head of State of Burundi, the eleventh ordinary session of the Council of Ministers of the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) was held on March 17, 2023 in Bujumbura, Republic of Burundi.
As part of an effort to operationalize an integrated landscape approach in southern Zambia, the COLANDS (Collaborating to operationalize landscape approaches for nature, development, and sustainability) initiative has been developing and applying new tools and techniques designed to understand and integrate stakeholder visions for the Kalomo Hills Forest Reserve landscape.
The General Secretariat for Land Management has launched the study on the national forestry capital for the preparation of the national scheme of land management of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This study, which is expected to take1 year, aims at determining the ecological (conservation), economic and social potentials of the forest massifs for the whole national territory. The launching ceremony took place this Tuesday, March 14, in Kinshasa.
The thirty-fifth meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board has ended with the approval of USD 587.7 million in new climate finance for developing nations, as well as the selection of a new Executive Director. Mafalda Duarte has been selected as the next Executive Director of GCF, with Henry Gonzalez, GCF Deputy Executive Director, appointed to serve as interim Executive Director until Duarte starts her tenure with GCF. The outgoing Executive Director Yannick Glemarec is reaching the end of his four-year term and will leave GCF on 2 April 2023.
“Working on gender issues requires the ability to understand questions such as ‘why’ and ‘how’,” said Stibniati Atmadja, Ethiopia’s Country Lead for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)’s Women’s Land Rights Initiative (WLR). “Qualitative data is key for this – but collecting and analyzing such data is a major skill gap in many countries.”
The third international conference of parliamentarians on the sustainable management of Central African forest ecosystems was held in Libreville, Gabon, from 27 to 28 February 2023.
On tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 11:00 am CET (Berlin, Brussels, Kinshasa Time) the partners, leaders and co-leaders of the Western Block held their last coordination meeting online, on the follow-up of the implementation of the Declaration on Transhumance across borders, on MS Teams.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board has selected Mafalda Duarte as its new Executive Director. Following an extensive global recruitment process, the Board made the selection during its thirty-fifth meeting at the GCF headquarters in Songdo, Incheon, Republic of Korea.
The "One Forest Youth Forum (OFYF)" was held from 27 to 28 February 2023 in Libreville (Gabon) as a prelude to the One Forest Summit. The event was organized spontaneously by the youth, members of AGRIDIS and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA Gabon) in collaboration with the National Youth Councils of ECCAS, the Youth Network for Central African Forests (REJEFAC), and a hundred NGOs and youth associations involved in the tackling of environmental, climate and forestry issues.
Jean Christophe Bokika Ngawolo, Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the NGO Mbou-Mon-Tour, was among the few personalities to speak at the One Forest Summit in the presence of various heads of state including Emmanuel Macron, Denis Sassou Nguesso and Ali Bongo. His organization was created in 1997 by a few university executives from the village of Nkala, in the territory of Bolobo (Maï-Ndombe). This territory has one of the highest densities of bonobos, an endemic species of the country and endangered according to the IUCN Red List.
The Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock of Burundi and with the financial support of the German cooperation through the GIZ project to support COMIFAC are organizing the eleventh ordinary session of its Council of Ministers from 14 to 17 March 2023 in Bujumbura, Republic of Burundi.
In order to improve the efficiency of the management of Protected Areas, the DRC, with the involvement of its partners, had invested in the BIOPAMA project in order to contribute to the development of the IMET tool "Integrated Management Effectiveness Tool". The use of the IMET tool in 18 DRC Protected Areas, for an overall frequency of 33 assessments, contributed to the diagnosis of management problems and to generate structured information to guide decision making for the change of the conservation status.
In line with the CBFP "Fair Deal", the OFS advocates for "A fair deal" between forest countries and the international community: "Time for payment for services rendered to the rest of the world (with the support of the secretariat of the High Ambition for Nature and Peoples (HAC) has come. In return for the commitment of forest countries, the international community will make available more funding, but also a mechanism for payment for the services rendered by nature kept intact, including carbon sequestration.”
Tuesday, January 31, 2023 at 11:30 am (Bangui time) the first coordination meeting of the year 2023 of the partners Co-leaders of the Bloc Centre for the follow-up of the implementation of the Declaration of N'Djaména on Transhumance, took place on MS Team.
For developing countries who are part of the UN’s REDD+ scheme (to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks), establishing baseline forest reference emission levels (FREL) is essential obligation to track progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. FREL covers emissions from deforestation and – in some countries – from forest degradation and peat decomposition. In countries like Indonesia, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Republic of Congo (RoC), that have large amounts of standing forest – and which can contribute significantly to a country’s emissions due to land-use change – these reference levels are particularly critical.
Ghana has become the second country in Africa after Mozambique to receive payments from a World Bank trust fund for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, commonly known as REDD+. The World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) paid Ghana $4,862,280 for reducing 972,456 tons of carbon emissions for the first monitoring period under the program (June to December 2019).
Douala, Republic of Cameroon, February 23, 2023- The Executive Secretary of COMIFAC, Mr. Hervé Martial MAIDOU, today presided over the opening ceremony of the fourteenth workshop of the Sub-Group on Protected Areas and Wildlife (SGTAPFS).
Paris, 27 February 2023 – The One Forest Summit will be held in Libreville, Gabon, on 01-02 March, with the goal of making progress on climate action and protecting biodiversity by promoting solidarity between the three major forest basins of the world. Director General Audrey Azoulay will attend to highlight UNESCO’s unique mandate to protect forest areas and numerous conservation programs.
Mungu Amurinde Jeanne d’Arc, a resident of Rubavu District in the Western Province of Rwanda has expressed special gratitude to the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame for the positive impacts brought by the Sebeya Catchment conservation project.
Baroness Scotland is head of the Commonwealth Secretariat - the organisation's main intergovernmental agency. Getty Image. The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, will be in Gabon from Wednesday 1 March to highlight the importance of protecting global biodiversity at the One Forest Summit in Libreville on Thursday.