Narrator:
Environmental problems including climate change are challenges that go beyond the ability of any one country to address. All have to make their contribution. In the same way, the solutions to these problems require the participation of many actors. Nowhere is this principle of cooperative action better demonstrated than in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.
The conservation and wise use of the Central African tropical forest serves the interests of the entire planet’s population. One of the key challenges to achieving conservation — where local communities can benefit from the forest in a sustainable way — is organization of the effort.
We continue our conversation with John Flynn, Director of the Central African Regional Partnership for the Environment, also known as CARPE, and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Today, Flynn discusses the importance of a multilateral approach and how the program helps promote that approach.
John Flynn:
This is, I would say, fundamental and critical to the ultimate success or failure of any effort of this scale, and it’s of such vital importance to the entire planet — to all peoples of the world — that everybody has a stake in it. Part of the reason that the so-called Congo Basin Forest Partnership was created with U.S. government leadership back in 2002 was to really call the world’s attention to how important this relatively unknown, in the international circles, Central Africa forest really is and how critical it is to the future, and to seize that opportunity to help really launch a major initiative to conserve that forest. There’s absolutely no one player, organization, or government, or donor, or any other type of organization that can do this alone. Our program is creating a structure for others to join, and we have seen really an incredible outpouring of interest since this program was initiated. When I first started in 2003, there was a certain amount of skepticism — why does the U.S. government want to come to this remote area to really do conservation? Could that really be possible? And many of the African governments were looking at us with a bit of suspicion thinking there must be some other motives. Maybe we wanted to explore for oil, maybe we wanted minerals, maybe we wanted other kinds of resources.
Because of the way that we’ve opened up the program to all comers — essentially — that wanted to contribute, that suspicion has largely disappeared. And now with some pretty concrete results that African governments, that local communities particularly can see right in front of their eyes, this is becoming more and more popular, this initiative. And now we’re seeing international research organizations getting involved. We’re seeing many other donor countries getting involved, especially as the awareness level is being raised in these communities, particularly in northern Europe and even in Central Africa itself.
You might find this a bit surprising, but in some of my visits to very remote places, which take sometimes days to even get to through various means of transportation including dug-out canoes, and jeeps, and walking, you find even villagers in remote locations in the forest talking about global climate change and global warming. And they actually feel and think that they see changes happening in their forests from their tradition. Whether it’s because the water levels are changing, places that they used to hunt are not the same as they were, they’re changing. Now whether they’re listening to a lot of radios out there, I’m not too sure, but somehow they’re getting a message and they’re linking this in their minds to climate change, whether it’s for real or not, we can’t say scientifically. But there’s definitely an awareness and there’s definitely a willingness by stakeholders of all kinds now to partner with the United States and with other organizations as long as they see that there’s a benefit for them in the process. And that’s I think, the key — how to create the right incentives so that people see the benefit from conservation.
Narrator:
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