20 November 2017

Highlights from Africa Palm Oil Initiative meeting in Gabon

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Highlights from Africa Palm Oil Initiative meeting in Gabon

The Prime Minister of Gabon, His Excellence Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet, and his cabinet opened the APOI third regional meeting, which was organised by Proforest, in conjunction with the Government of Gabon, WWF-Gabon and the Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA 2020) Secretariat.

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The meeting welcomed around 80 participants from over 15 different countries and succeeded in:

Five key outcomes from the meeting

The regional meeting:

  • Highlighting the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships to effectively advance the mission for the elimination of the deforestation from commodity supply chains. 
  • Emphasized the need to integrate the views of forest peoples' communities when developing national policies against deforestation.
  • Underlined the crucial role of reliable and adequate data to inform the creation of policies that provide the legislative groundwork for sustainable agricultural production.
  • Stressed the importance of land rights and land use planning for the implementation of commitments to eliminate deforestation.
  • Facilitated intra-country learning for all ten countries engaged with the Africa Palm Oil Initiative. These exchanges were incorporated into the national principles and action plans in accordance with the national context and the evolution of the process.

Next steps

In the coming year, the APOI will be focusing on:

  • Engaging the countries in the implementation phase through the TFA 2020 Implementation Dialogue process: facilitating targeted multi-stakeholder dialogues that can help realise the national action plans.
  • Supporting the country teams as they seek targeted opportunities for the resources and finance required to engage, develop and implement their national principles for sustainable palm oil.
  • Building the national knowledge base, technical expertise and general capacity needed to sustain the APOI in each country.
  • Communicating the APOI objectives to a wider audience, at both a regional level and within each APOI country.
  • Other support needs identified by the APOI country teams.