The Summit of the Three Basins, Biodiversity Ecosystems, and Tropical Forests (S3B EBFT) will take place in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, from October 26–28, 2023.
The Three Great Basins Alliance was founded by the Republic of Congo, and this three-day summit the first of its kind will unite the world’s three largest tropical forest basins, the Borneo-Mekong in Southeast Asia, the Amazon, and the Congo.
The summit aims to establish the world’s first worldwide coalition for the restoration of 350 million hectares of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
Collinet Makosso, Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, stated that “the summit should ratify genuine south-south cooperation in support of biodiversity and the climate.”
Vice President Jessica Alupo is President Kaguta Museveni’s representative at the summit, which will be attended by nearly 4,500 delegates from every continent. 15 heads of state are scheduled to attend the summit’s high-level section in Brazzaville, according to the official schedule.
Leaders are likely to discuss ways to finance the preservation of their regions rich in wildlife and important sites for storing carbon dioxide that warms the planet, as well as ways to work together to stop deforestation and forest destruction.
Arlette Soudan-Nonault, the Republic of Congo’s environment minister, said “the summit is a chance to set in motion an historic movement and to initiate cooperation between our three basins.”
“The 1.5 billion people who live in the basin countries, as well as the rest of humanity who depend on them, have a responsibility as guardians of global biodiversity, as the lungs of the planet, and as regulators of the Earth’s carbon balance to preserve the ecosystems.” she continued
According to the World Wildlife Fund, the nations in the three basins contain two-thirds of the planet’s biodiversity and 80% of the world’s tropical forests. However, the forests are under tremendous pressure due to logging, forest degradation, the extinction of native species, and extreme weather events brought on by climate change. This puts local economies and food security at risk.
According to an analysis by the World Resources Institute, the three basins have experienced different trends over the years. The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest basin, saw an 18% increase in forest loss from 2021 to 2022, much of that driven by Brazil, where deforestation has since been reduced in the first six months of this year. Forest loss has decreased significantly in Indonesia and Malaysia in recent years and remained relatively consistent in the Congo.
