Gabon, with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), is preparing for its rapid and sustainable transition from a “brown economy to a green economy” .
The United Nations Development Program, in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has just launched a process to enable Gabon to derive development gains, through sustainable transformation and a methodical audit of these endowments.
“The constant external shocks that Gabon has suffered due to the sharp drop in world oil prices and the need to finance development in the post-Covid-19 era demonstrate the importance of a transformation in Gabon that would do so move from brown growth to green growth based on its natural capital, ”said ECA Central Africa office director Antonio Pedro during the project launch exercise.
For the latter, this new approach will provide an additional instrument for the country in its strategies for financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Worth one million dollars, funded over two years by the Common Fund SDG, this project entitled “Gabon and the SDGs beyond oil: financing a rapid and sustainable transition from a brown economy to a green ”, will support the Gabon vert pillar of the Emerging Gabon Strategic Plan (PSGE 2009-2025), through the development of two program axes. Sustainable production and consumption and natural capital accounting (NCA).
According to experts from the CEA Central Africa office and advisers from the Ministry of Water and Forests, the first part of the project aims to help Gabon move from a brown economy to a green economy. “This objective would be achieved by using sustainably its forest, mining and land resources to accelerate economic diversification and structural transformation, develop value chains and put in place innovative production systems that will create jobs for young people and women” .
The second component is based on a system of quantification and granular identification of the units of the entire universe of Gabon’s ecological biodiversity and its mining and land resources in order to measure their true global monetary value and rebase the wealth situation. from the country. “The above approach, technically known as natural capital accounting (NCA), promises to expand Gabon’s fiscal space, which literally refers to reducing public debt while having access to more cash to finance its development needs and shift it to an upper middle-income economy where growth can create jobs and lift people out of poverty once and for all”
According to the advisor to the Gabonese Minister of Water and Forests, the Sea and the Environment, Aristide Kassangoye, this joint ECA-UNDP project will help the country to ease the tension between the need for economic production and the need to protect the environment. environment, two sides of the same coin which should contribute to inclusive growth.
“It will be a blow in the arm of the development pillar of green Gabon, focused on the exploitation of renewable energies, thus reducing carbon emissions, creating a sustainable wood industry and achieving food self-sufficiency through sustainable agriculture,” he declared.
