22 Jun
2006 - Washington/Paris/Yaoundé – France
and Cameroon signed the first ever Central African
debt-for-nature swap today, which will see at
least US$25 million over the next five years invested
in protecting parts of the Congo River Basin,
the world’s second largest tropical forest.
The agreement was initiated
by France’s Debt Development Contract (C2D) under
the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative
(HIPC) — a joint initiative of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund. The HIPC’s goal
is to reduce the excessive debt faced by the world’s
poorest nations. The goal of the C2D is to provide
100 per cent debt relief of the concessional loans
France contracted to other countries. Twenty-two
countries are eligible for C2D, with the the total
amount of C2D debt relief estimated at US$4.6
billion.
The agreement requires Cameroon
to earmark funds among four different sectors:
education, health, infrastructure and natural
resources. This is the first C2D agreement to
allocate funds to natural resources. Previously
funding had only been allocated to the education
and health sectors, but an emphasis has been placed
on the environment at the request of French president
Jacques Chirac last July.
“The importance of this unique
and history making agreement lies in the combination
of debt forgiveness and investment in forest conservation
and local communities,” said Laurent Some, Director
of WWF’s Central African Regional Programme Office,
based in Cameroon.
The investment funds will be
used to better manage protected areas, wildlife
and forest production and increase community forest
resources and research capacity. Ultimately, they
will help reduce poverty while protecting and
managing natural forestry resources.
WWF sees this debt-for-nature
swap as a concrete example of the commitment expressed
by the region’s heads of state at the Brazzaville
Summit in February 2005, and looks to other nations
to follow France and Cameroon’s lead.
END NOTES:
• In February 2005, Cenetral
African Heads of States signed the first ever
region-wide conservation treaty, and an agreement
to protect over seven per cent of the Congo Basin
forests, the second largest rainforest after the
Amazon.
• A massive forest expanse covering
1.5 million km2, the Congo River Basin spreads
across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
most of Congo-Brazzaville, the southeastern reaches
of Cameroon, southern Central African Republic
(CAR), Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.
