ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT mainly intergovernmental) and an incentive gap (lack of incentives for countries to cooperate and limit their international spillovers, as moral incentives are insufficient). Case Study - Protecting the Congo Rainforest through bilateral aid to the DRC The Congo Rainforest: an International Public Good It is often said that the least developed countries and the most vulnerable people will be first hit by climate change, with developed countries such as the UK eventually being impacted as well.4 Tropical forests play a very important role in the fight against climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, deforestation in tropical areas accounts for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions.5 While the Amazon often attracts the majority of the international community’s focus as the world’s largest rainforest, its less famous counterpart the Congo Rainforest seconds it in terms of size. The latter is situated in the Congo Basin, and covers 500 million acres spread across six countries.6 This large rainforest provides many benefits and services to humankind: it is a storehouse of carbon, a home to very rich biodiversity, and helps to regulate the world’s climate system.7 Global initiatives to mitigate and reverse the effects of global warming have recognised the crucial role of this massive rainforest and called for its sustainable management, notably regarding the exploitation of its numerous resources. However, the way in which this forest is used is currently unsustainable.8 In the past twenty years, commodity prices and specifically minerals which are largely present in the Congo Basin have increased, resulting in greater incentives for deforestation.9 The Need for Bilateral Funding Between 2008 and 2017, the Congo Basin forests received the smallest amount of bilateral and multilateral funding (USD 1.7 million) out of the largest tropical forests worldwide, with the Amazon basin receiving USD 5.1 million and the Southeast Asian forests receiving USD 8.1 million.10 Thus, there are many opportunities for funding, espe-
cially considering that the United Kingdom’s current contribution only represents 1.9% of all the bilateral donations in the Congo Basin between 2008 and 2017.11 The best way to preserve and provide an International Public Good such as the Congo Basin is through bilateral funding. In fact, 60% of the Congo Rainforest is situated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This country is responsible for 80% of the tree cover losses between 2001 and 2017 and for 79.3% of the equivalent of C02 emissions in mg of CO2. Between 2000 and 2014, the DRC lost an average of 570,000 hectares (0,2%) of the rainforest to deforestation per day. This corresponds to an area larger than Bangladesh.12 Yet, the sustainable management and regulation necessary to ensure preservation of this forest for all stakeholders involves enormous costs. Because of this, external financing is absolutely necessary to help the DRC preserve the second largest rainforest in the world. Increasing UK’s funding for the conservation of the Congo Rainforest The UK has historically been a leader in fighting climate change at the national and international levels by playing an important role at the Paris Agreement and in promoting SDGs. For three decades, foreign assistance programs were influenced by the Cold War, during which strategic and security interests affected the UK government’s choice of which countries to support and how, and by the need to support the UK’s balance of payments, which had encouraged governments to link overseas aid to British exports. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) came into existence at a time of considerable change in international thinking about development. After the Brundtland Report and the shift in the approach to development studies in the 1990s, the international community and particularly
‘Daily activity: On the way from Kisangani to Masako village. Democratic Republic of Congo.’ Photo by Ollivier Girard/CIFOR. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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