Environment – Alliance for Rainforests – Joint communiqué (24 July 2020)

The mobilization of the Alliance for Rainforests, announced by the President following the catastrophic fires of 2019 in several regions of the world, must lead to the protection, sustainable management and restoration of one of the ecosystems fundamental to maintaining the planet’s equilibrium.

Following a negotiation process which was begun at the G7 Biarritz summit, then at the United Nations General Assembly, and spearheaded by our country, France and its partners, countries in the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin and South-East Asia, and European donor countries agreed on the text of a Charter establishing the Alliance for Rainforests: Read the Charter (in French).

France’s Permanent Representative to the UN handed the document to Mr António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, yesterday, informing him that it was open for signature by the relevant countries.

The Alliance is an open coalition of countries sharing the same ambitions for forests; it will evolve and bring together all those who share its goals. It aims to talk to and act closely with the relevant sectors of civil society (indigenous peoples and local communities, NGOs, businesses, agricultural organizations, women’s associations, researchers and research centres) and local authorities in the countries concerned, in view of the continuing, even intensifying deforestation activity.

To achieve its goal of mobilizing to protect tropical forests, the Alliance will have three concrete, priority tasks:

• to serve as a political platform between donor countries and major forest countries in order to exchange good practice and get a shared vision of their own particular issues;
• to list all the public and private initiatives concerning forests so they are consistent with the objectives set out in the Charter;
• to head off crises affecting forests (fires, epidemics etc.) by preparing forest countries, particularly the most vulnerable, to respond to them more quickly thanks to better structured and thus more effective international solidarity and, with the support of all the Alliance members, implement agreed policies promoting better protection for rainforest ecosystems.

In order to contribute fully to the Alliance’s objectives, France has committed itself to and decided to get involved in several concrete projects. In particular, it is contributing to the Natural Capital Lab, a trust fund hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), focused on financial innovation for biodiversity and the fight against deforestation.

It is also contributing to an ambitious project from the NGO Conservation International entitled “Our Future Forests”. It consists in strengthening the Amazon rainforest’s land management by relying on indigenous peoples, in particular through monitoring systems, increased capacity and the development of protected areas. It is also mobilizing the French Development Agency’s tools and the French Facility for Global Environment (FFEM), several actions of which will help strengthen participatory forestry and make it more innovative, to the benefit of the local communities living on the edge of protected areas in the Congo Basin and socio-environmental resilience, through the management of protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso.

Finally, France is also supporting indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin affected by the COVID-19 health crisis. €5 million of funding has been mobilized for this purpose to benefit several local authorities in Brazil, particularly in the State of Amapá, which borders the territorial collectivity of Guiana, and the Rainforest Foundation, for the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin.

For further information:

• The preservation of biodiversity