The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has welcomed a commitment made by state actors to “closely cooperate” to conserve and restore tropical forest basins, emphasising the importance of fostering real action to halt deforestation. The Three Basins Summit took place in the Republic of the Congo and was seen as an opportunity to formulate a “robust” tri-basin alliance between the three tropical forest basins – the Amazon, Congo and Asia-Pacific – to drive finance and other methods to better support a transition to the sustainable management of forests. “The Three Basins Summit provided a good start on important discussions about the future of these forests and the solutions that are needed to address the challenges they face, but we are disappointed that it did not result in an Alliance of the three basins, as hoped,” said Fran Price, WWF Global Forests Lead. “Going forward, it will be important to have more robust representation and high-level leadership from all three regions and a more structured discussion on topics such as how to collectively tackle drivers of deforestation, promote restoration and sustainable forest management.”
