2019 Douala Experts Meeting

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The Facilitation of the Kingdom of Belgium of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), is pleased to announce that the “Follow-up expert meeting on the International Conference on security, the fight against poaching, monitoring transhumance and armed groups circulating between the Sahel and Equatorial Africa”, the “CBFP Civil Society Day” and the “Seventh CBFP Council Meeting” will take place from 16 to 19 December 2019 in Douala, Cameroon.

The meetings will be organized with the financial and technical support of the Consortium of the CBFP Facilitation of the Kingdom of the Belgium comprising the German Ministry of Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the European Union (DEVCO) and the Kingdom of Belgium. The seventh Council Meeting will close with the handover of the CBFP from the Kingdom of Belgium (outgoing) to the Federal Republic of Germany (incoming).

The meetings will be chaired by His Excellency Mr. François-Xavier de Donnea, Minister of State of the Kingdom of Belgium and CBFP Facilitator and co-chaired by His Excellency Mr. Jules Doret Ndongo, Minister of Forestry and Wildlife of Cameroon, Acting President of COMIFAC.

Follow-up expert meeting on the N’Djamena conference - 16-17 December 2019

The Follow-up Expert Meeting on the International conference on security, the fight against poaching, monitoring transhumance and armed groups circulating between the Sahel and Equatorial Africa will hold from 16 to 17 December 2019. Experts taking part in the deliberations will be fanned out into the same thematic and geographic groups as those of the N’Djamena Conference held in January:

Group 1: West Bloc centered around Lake Chad and comprising Cameroon, Nigeria, CAR and Chad.

Group 2: Center Bloc comprising Chad, CAR, the DRC, Sudan and South Sudan.

Group 3: East Bloc comprising the CAR, the DRC, Sudan and South Sudan.

The expert meeting is expected to develop a custom logical framework for each of the 3 intervention blocs. These logical frameworks will form the basis for developing a comprehensive action document (technical and financial) following the expert meeting. Each of the 3 logical frameworks (one for each bloc) will be tailored to the 8 intervention areas identified at the January 2019 N’Djamena Conference (see attached Terms of Reference).

Depending on the prevailing situation in the bloc concerned, the experts will also decide whether or not to conduct specific activities relating to the following issues:

Revamping implementation of existing bilateral agreements;
Whether or not to negotiate and sign new bilateral agreements;
Whether or not to implement new approaches to management and sustainable financing of protected areas (for instance by delegating protected area management through public private partnerships (PPP)).

The experts will also propose a strategy for establishing a regional mechanism to monitor and guide policy on the interactions between security/protected areas/pastoralism. They will propose an action plan for organizing at least three meetings from 2020 to 2021 between actors (local, national and international) in the security, pastoralist and protected area sectors.

Close to a hundred participants are expected to attend, including experts appointed by each of the seven countries concerned (Chad, Cameroon, CAR, Sudan, South-Sudan, RDC, Niger), resource persons for each of the 3 blocs identified and regional organizations. Representatives of the CBFP Donors’ College will be invited to attend in observer capacity.

CBFP Civil Society Day- 18 December 2019

The CBFP Civil Society Day is scheduled for 18 December 2019. It will be organized by the Leaders of the CBFP Civil Society College namely the CEFDHAC Regional Steering Committee (Conference on Dense and Moist Forest Ecosystems of Central Africa) and the ACRN Focal Point (African Community Rights Network). The Terms of Reference of the Civil Society Day are hereby attached. It will be entitled “Congo Basin forests at the crossroads between Conservation- Sustainable Management and Development- Climate Change and Investments in the forestry sector: Civil society’s role and local communities’ expectations”

The overall aim of the day is to help anchor emerging themes relating to conservation, sustainable forest management and improving the livelihoods of people living in and around forests. An entire day of the Civil Society College event will be devoted to presenting the results of upstream discussions on emerging themes relating to conservation, the GDF and improving the livelihoods of people living in and around forests. Specific aims will be to:

Take ownership of the roadmap of participatory forestry and the development of its toolbox, as well as relevant initiatives that are ongoing or likely to be developed under emerging themes, in order to strengthen the capacities of civil society and local communities to work towards biodiversity conservation while improving the socio-economic status of IPCLs:
Identify actions needed to implement one of the recommendations of the 18th MoP held in Brussels which recalls “the crucial need to effectively enforce national legal and regulatory frameworks designed to be the main pillar of good governance to nurture the economic, biological and cultural value of the renewable natural resources of the Congo Basin forests”;
Take ownership of the N’Djamena anti-poaching roadmap including the challenge of managing protected areas, buffer zones and cross-border landscapes in order to increase civil society’s contribution to its implementation;
Review challenges related to transhumance, strengthening the resilience of our communities to the adverse effects of climate change and all other relevant initiatives aimed at fighting climate change in order to increase carbon sequestration and thus step up the contribution of the Congo Basin forests to the fight against global warming with emphasis on REDD+ and other climate-related initiatives in such a way as to benefit IPLCs.;
Map out fundraising opportunities available to civil society organizations to monitor and evaluate economic and social development projects implemented for the benefit of IPLCs, for submission during a dialogue to be held with the Donors’ College;
Take ownership of the development of the New Deal Humanity and Nature and define the conditions for the Civil Society College’s contribution with a view to articulating the positions of the College’s members, including the positions of IPCLs.
Lay the groundwork for developing standards and indicators to enable each country and the sub-region to assess the impact of projects and investments implemented to foster conservation efforts, and for the benefit of the GDF and IPLCs.

Close to a hundred participants are expected to attend representing the members of the CBFP Civil Society College, namely: African Community Rights Network - CEFDHAC regional steering committee - FLAG - PR2CAC -REJEFAC - REFADD - RECEIAC - ROSCEVAC - SEEAC - REPAR - REFACOF - ReRaC - REPALEAC.

Please download the following PDF Documents:

FR-Note-Information_Reunion_Douala_PFBC_091019_EN.pdf (289.3 KiB)

FR-Note-Information_Reunion_Douala_PFBC_091019.pdf