To protect our forest and promote its sustainable management, our priority, backed by this new partnership, is to strengthen governance and transparency across all land use sectors. These concerted efforts are essential in a country the size of Western Europe with one of the lowest human development indices in the world, and that loses nearly half a million hectares of forest every year.
Through this new multi-year partnership, the DRC aims to first cap forest cover loss at its average [2] and ensure that deforestation continues to decline. Exacerbated by extreme poverty, forest loss in the DRC is mainly due to a growing population lacking livelihood opportunities outside the forest and relying mostly on fuelwood for cooking, all that in the absence of land use planning.
Any solution proposed to stem forest loss in the DRC must therefore focus on rural development, poverty reduction, and better food security. It will help us closely monitor commitments taken, including the steps that will lead to a responsible and progressive lifting of the moratorium, the publication of contracts in all sectors linked to the use of land and the commitment taken by President Tshisekedi to cancel all dubious contracts of forest concessions.
We are particularly encouraged by the mobilisation of all sectors committed to protect our High Value Forests and peatlands. Note to editors. Its peatlands cover , km2 and are the largest in the world. Its ecosystem offers a carbon absorption service equivalent to 10 years of global emissions. Supported by European countries [4] , the Republic of Korea, the European Union and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Central African Forest Initiative CAFI is a United Nations Trust Fund and policy dialogue platform that aims to support six Central African countries [5] in pursuing a low-emission development pathway that ensures economic growth and poverty reduction while protecting the forests and natural resources, on which people depend.
CAFI thus combines investments and high-level policy dialogue to help its six partner countries implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, fight poverty and develop sustainably while being aligned with the post biodiversity framework. The Central Africa's tropical rainforest is under pressure. While trends and causes vary widely across national contexts, forest loss represents more than 6 million hectares of primary tropical forest since , equivalent to about 6 million rugby fields.
