Amazon Summit: Inspiration for Protecting African Rainforests
Eight Amazon countries, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, have just recently concluded the Amazon Summit in the city of Belém, Brazil. This summit was focused on dealing with several environmental and climate challenges related to the Amazon Rainforest. Earlier, in 1978, the eight Amazon countries, in response to the increasing destruction of the Amazon, had agreed to a treaty, the Amazon Co-operation Treaty. Out of this treaty, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO) has since functioned as a forum for understanding and framing responses to harmful environmental practices in the Amazon region. Although this year's summit failed to reach an agreement on the 2030 deadline proposed by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for ending deforestation in the Amazon, it managed to reinforce the consensus that the destruction of the Amazon should be brought to an end.
A Lesson for Africa
Interestingly, Sassou Nguesso and Félix Tshisekedi, leaders of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were present at the 2023 Amazon Summit. Both presidents are from the equatorial region of Africa, home to the Equatorial Rainforest. The Equatorial Rainforest is often referred to as the lungs of Africa, in acknowledgment of its crucial function as a carbon sink/reservoir. Like the Amazon, the Equatorial Rainforest is under severe assault from varied commercial interests such as logging and fossil fuel exploration. A key lesson that can be learned from the Amazon Summit by the visiting African leaders, as well as other stakeholders from the African continent, is the need for a similar concord centred on the issues affecting African rainforests. The African arrangement should be a better one since the Amazon Summit is only the fourth meeting of ACTO in its 45-year history.
Funding Deforestation Combat Through Climate Finance
Thankfully, both projects that combat deforestation and those that promote reforestation can be creatively funded using climate finance. One of many climate finance products that may be utilised is carbon credits. (This is however a transitional form of climate finance, as carbon offsets mean continued emission in other places. Carbon credits are also subject to fraud and require a great deal of diligence to ensure the genuineness of emissions savings.) Other products include green bonds, green loans, sustainability-linked loans, green mortgages, green investment funds, grants, and concessionary loans.
To access climate finance, projects need to be investment-ready. This entails meeting all applicable requisites. These requirements are always evolving as fossil fuel divestment is scaled up and new climate standards are developed. As a result, governments and climate project developers need to be trained in climate compliance. Even though experts with the competence to train stakeholders are currently few and far between, capacity is expected to grow over the years. Already, there are consulting firms like EarnMore Consultants that specialise in developing climate projects and training sector players in Africa.