EPISODE 052 - GABON
Minister of Water, Forests, the Sea, and Environment
Gabon
Minister Lee White CBE
YouTube
Sustainable news: (subtitles: English) with guest Minister Lee White CBE – Gabon
Gabon is first African country paid to protect its rainforest
- 00:00:36 Minister Lee White CBE Question 1 – Background story
- 00:02:26 Minister Lee White CBE Question 2 – Payment by Norway – the way it all works and how Gabon is doing it
- 00:04:25 Minister Lee White CBE Question 3 – Can the system be replicated elsewhere on the continent?
Podcast 052 with special guest – Minister Lee White CBE | Gabon | Minister of Water, Forests, the Sea, and Environment, charged with Climate Change , SDGs and Land-use Planning
00:59 Intro to Minister White and background story: setting up parks with the president Omar Bongo Ondimba – turning point towards sustainable forestry
06:09 Payment by Norway – the way it all works and how Gabon is doing it
22:08 Can the system be replicated elsewhere on the continent? The mechanism to save the Congo basin
29:40 The protection by law won’t help, because it is dying from climate change.
38:28 When does climate change start? When do the polluters become liable?
ARTICLES DISCUSSED
The UN-backed Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi) has handed over $17m (£12m) – the first tranche of a $150m deal struck in 2019.
Nearly 90% of Gabon is covered by forest, which captures more carbon than the country emits.
Rainforests are vital for absorbing the globe’s climate-heating emissions.
Gabon has been able to show that it managed to reduce deforestation and so lower its carbon emissions in 2016 and 2017 compared to the previous decade, Cafi says.
Ahead of a key UN summit, the idea of ‘natural capital’ is gaining ground as a tool to avert environmental catastrophe.
After years in which its economy depended on oil, Gabon is seeking to reposition itself as a “green superpower”. A rare high-income country in Africa, with a nominal per capita income of $8,600, Gabon wants to diversify as oil reserves dwindle.
It also wants recognition for preserving its tropical forests, part of the great Congo Basin rainforest — the “lungs of Africa” that are the planet’s most important forest ecosystem after the Amazon
Unsplash:
- Image Cocobeach Gabon and Akanda, Gabon – Ralph Messi