The One Forest Summit will be a key moment to move forward on climate action and the preservation of biodiversity, by promoting solidarity between the three major forest basins on a global scale: the Amazon Forest, the Congo basin, and the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. These forest basins play a critical role in regulating the climate by sequestering millions of tons of CO2. Their flora and fauna are home to treasures of biodiversity. And by acting as buffers between human societies and the microbial cycles of wild spaces, they play a key role in preventing the emergence of new epidemics.

The links between biodiversity and health will be explored (through the PREZODE initiative), the traditional practices that allow for the protection of endemic species, but also to improve the mapping of these areas, whose ecological wealth remains poorly known. On that perspective, the Summit will foster the strengthening of scientific cooperation between those three major basins and international expertise on the services provided by forests.

A session led by the PREZODE Initiative will take place on March 1^st on the topic “Fighting deforestation to protect biodiversity and prevent of zoonoses”.

The Summit brings together heads of states and ministers from all continents, as well as scientists, business leaders, investors and NGOs, to address issues related to the preservation of these major forest basins, following the historic agreement reached in Montreal on the protection of biodiversity. The One Planet Summit is part of a series of high-level meetings within the framework of the One Planet Summit. The launch of the PREZODE initiative was announced during the 2021 One Planet Summit.