Congo Basin Forest Partnership

The forest ecosystems of the Congo basin span across much of Central Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf of Guinea to the mountains of the Albertine Rift in the east. Covering 700,000 square miles in six countries, they constitute the second largest area of contiguous moist tropical forest left in the world and represent approximately one fifth of the world's remaining closed canopy tropical forest. This vast area hosts a wealth of biodiversity, including over 10,000 species of plants, 1,000 species of birds, and 400 species of mammals, and three of the world's four species of great apes. It is also home to more than 24 million people, many of which depend on the forest for their livelihoods. The Congo basin forests not only play a critical role for global biodiversity conservation, they also provide vital regional and global ecological services as a carbon sink and catchment basin.

Even though much of the forest area remains intact, the regional forest ecosystems continue to be at risk from a complex set of threats that call for concerted global action: unsustainable timber and mineral extraction, bush meat trade for urban and commercial forestry settlement markets, land clearing for agriculture, and weak governance.

The Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) is an informal association that brings together around 40 governmental, nongovernmental, and international organizations. The CBFP was launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2002 in response to a call by the United Nations General Assembly in resolution 54/214 on February 1, 2000 encouraging the international community to support the countries of the Congo basin with financial and technical assistance in their efforts toward sustainable management of the forests. As a "type II" partnership ("type I" partnerships are intergovernmental negotiations), the CBFP is a non-binding network based on a voluntary agreement among governments, the private sector, civil society, and development organizations.

The form of governance chosen by the CBFP is steering through facilitation provided by one member for a set period of time. The facilitator organizes dialogue and promotes cooperation between the partners to set up a work program based on the guidelines established in the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC) Convergence Plan, and to represent the partnership externally. The facilitator is chosen on a voluntary basis. Germany is the facilitator for 2008-09 (the United States served as the facilitator in 2003-04 and France in 2005-07).

The CBFP does not play a direct part in program implementation or financing. It does not have a secretariat or permanent staff. It works as a transmission belt between donors and implementing agencies and provides a forum for dialogue between its partners. Based on the results of a French-German evaluation of the partnership conducted in 2007, the German facilitation committed to enhance CBFP member activities in four strategic priority areas:

• Strengthening of COMIFAC institutions and the CBFP
• Improving forest governance and framework conditions
• Implementing the Convergence Plan and major international environmental conventions and agreements
• Creating innovative financial mechanisms to support funding of Convergence Plan measures

In continuation of the efforts accomplished by previous facilitations, Germany endeavors to further strengthen CBFP's coordination potential and to fully develop its role as a forum for dialogue for all stakeholders in the forest sector.

CBFP works in close relationship with the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC), the regional body in charge of forests and environmental policy, coordination and harmonization, with the objective to promote the conservation and sustainable management of the Congo Basin's forest ecosystems.

The U.S. contribution to the partnership builds on the strengths of the Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE). In recognition of the important role of the Congo basin and amid the increasing pressures facing it, CARPE works to reduce the rate of forest degradation and loss of biodiversity by supporting increased local, national, and regional natural resource management capacity. CBFP aims to inform partners about the programs and activities currently financed and implemented by its members, through meetings, working groups, email communication and the partnership's Web site, www.cbfp.org.

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