The astonishing absence of Félix Tshisekedi at the One Forest Summit

The President of the DRC, Felix Tshisekedi, is one of the big absentees from the One Forest Summit which opens today in Gabon. Why did the Head of State refuse to go to Libreville?

Protect the rainforest. This is the promise of the One Forest Summit, which begins this Wednesday, March 1 in Gabon. Announcements should come out of this summit, but will the event be as convincing as we hope? Nothing is less sure. Especially since two guests will be missing, and not the least: the Congolese and Brazilian presidents, Félix Tshisekedi, and Lula, did not make the trip to Libreville. And this is shocking: these two countries are the ones with the most tropical forests.

Did the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) want to avoid meeting his Rwandan counterpart, with whom he is in diplomatic indelicacy ? If this is the case, the excuse is no longer valid since we know that Paul Kagame decided not to make the trip, preferring to assign his Ministers of Foreign Affairs and the Environment.

So how to explain the absence of Felix Tshisekedi? The Congolese Head of State has decided to send his Prime Minister, Sama Lukonde Kyenge, and the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of de the environment. A way to show that the environment is no longer its priority? If, during COP 26, the DRC had taken measures against deforestation, last July, the DRC had decided to sell plots of land in the Congo Basin to oil companies. "Our priority is not to save the planet", then released Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, ambassador and expert in sustainable development, who indicated that he wanted prioritize economic reforms over reforms to combat global warming.

Announcements not followed by effects

Félix Tshisekedi's inaction is not new. Two years ago, Greenpeace was surprised at the Congolese president's lack of ambition. The NGO claimed to have "a feeling of lack of coordination of the various reforms underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo" and was surprised that, despite "the ambition expressed by President Tshisekedi at the One Planet Summit to go from 14 % of protected areas to 17% of the national territory”, to date, “nothing has been done to respond to this political will”.

For Greenpeace, Congo's land-use planning reform was "unilaterally managed by the minister in charge of land-use planning" and continued "to ignore the views of Congolese civil society, as they represent an important and decisive contribution to taking into account the needs of all and the success of this ambition”.

It remains to be seen what announcements will be made in Libreville and whether this One Forest Summit will allow real measures to be taken to save the tropical forests of the Congo Basin. The absence of Félix Tshisekedi is in any case a bad signal sent to the organizers of the summit.