Interview
Alain Karsenty: “Financing issues, the most important issue” of the One Forest Summit
Lee White, Minister for Water, Forests, the Sea and the Environment of Gabon, and Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, Secretary of State to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, in charge of Development, Francophonie and international partnerships, participating in the opening session of the One Forest Summit in Libreville on March 1, 2023. AFP - LUDOVIC MARIN
Text by: Paulina Zidi Follow
5 mins
French President Emmanuel Macron is taking part in Libreville with several Central African heads of state at the One Forest Summit (March 1 and 2, 2023), dedicated to the protection of tropical forests in this sub-region of the continent.
For RFI, Alain Karsenty, economist and researcher at the Center for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD), takes stock of the issues at this summit.
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Emmanuel Macron landed on March 1, 2023 in Libreville, Gabon on the occasion of the One Forest Summit. Alongside several other African heads of state and government, the French president must address this March 2 the role played by the forests of the Congo Basin against climate change. These forests are distributed between Congo-Brazzaville, DRC, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, six countries in Central Africa which are home to the first green lung of the planet in front of the Amazon. At the opening of the summit yesterday, RFI met Alain Karsenty, economist and researcher at the Center for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD).
RFI: Alain Karsenty, what is the main challenge of this Summit?
Alain Karsenty:
I believe that the most important issue is questions of financing, finding the means to finance countries like Gabon, for example, which today have very little deforestation and which, as a result, are not very favored by existing mechanisms.
The mechanisms that exist at the UN level are rather mechanisms that remunerate the countries that reduce deforestation, that is to say that there must already be a high level of deforestation and we can receive remuneration if there is has a really noticeable drop in deforestation.
As in Gabon, there is really very little deforestation, it is very clear that there is a problem for this type of country: they think that there is no financial instrument allowing to remunerate in a correct way their forest conservation efforts.
Is the challenge also to protect the tropical forests of the Congo Basin which are today a major player in the fight against global warming, against climate change?
Yes.
It is absolutely indisputable.
These are enormous reservoirs, and therefore carbon stocks in the trees and in the soil which are absolutely gigantic.
We absolutely must not lose them otherwise we would have global warming that would be uncontrolled, uncontrollable.
In addition, in the Congo Basin, these forests absorb more CO2 than they release.
So it's a double importance.
► To read also Tropical forests: what to expect from the “One Forest Summit” which opens in Gabon?
One area that is very much covered here is that of carbon finance. How to finally monetize this reserve, this carbon capture capacity. Is it difficult to find a consensus?
Many countries would like us to pay for standing carbon stocks.
It is not accepted at all, there is no mechanism for that and it is not accepted at all by international negotiations.
I don't think that will change.
Gabon is not asking to be paid for its stock, it is asking to be paid for additional removals, which it links to political measures such as the creation of national parks, or the ban on the export of logs which would have caused the production.
Afterwards, we can discuss the fact that there is really a demonstrated cause and effect link between these measures and the fact that forests absorb more CO2, it is a discussion that is open from this point of view.
But what is clear is that it will not completely satisfy Gabon anyway.
The price of this ton of carbon sold is also subject to debate. Today, we are talking about 3 to 5 dollars. Gabon would like to sell it between 30 and 50 dollars. How much is a ton of carbon worth today?
The value today on this voluntary market is the fact that there are a lot of carbon credit offers on the market and that there are a limited number of companies that actually want to buy, essentially companies in the North which for reasons, because they want to be carbon neutral.
They want to display it vis-à-vis their shareholders, vis-à-vis their customers, who buy carbon credits to say that they are offsetting emissions.
They make a trade-off between "how much does it cost us to reduce my emissions and how much does it cost me to buy carbon credits to compensate".
And so, you see, in this trade-off, if the carbon credits are too expensive, people don't buy.
Because basically, what feeds this market is that carbon credits are not expensive.
If carbon credits were very expensive, companies would prefer to reduce their emissions because first of all, it would be more credible from an environmental point of view, they would be less attacked by NGOs and it would be scientifically much more solid.
So that's why prices can go up.
But it's still limited precisely by the fact that if people buy it, it's because it's not that expensive.
► To read also Gabon: Emmanuel Macron in Libreville to participate in the One Forest Summit
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