Macroscope | Together, Xi and Macron can save the Congo Basin from deforestation

On his coming trip to China, French President Emmanuel Macron will certainly discuss the war in Ukraine with President Xi Jinping. How to collaboratively mitigate its immediate impact in Europe, address its geopolitical and energy-related consequences, and bring it to an end via a shared peace plan, will be top-of-the-list issues for the two heads of state.

I look forward to hearing positive news. But it is going to be a challenge for China and France to find meaningful common ground. The Sino-Russian alliance, built on a shared criticism of the current world order, appears stronger than ever. So perhaps a powerful terrain d’entente could be found somewhere else, by addressing the next global threat to humanity.

France and China both want to play a leading role in solving the global climate and biodiversity crises. France was the emblematic host of the international negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement, which set out a framework to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees. And Macron launched the Make Our Planet Great Again initiative after the US decided to leave the Paris Agreement.

Xi has put climate policies at the core of the nation’s green growth strategy for the coming decades and pledged that carbon emissions would peak by 2030, with carbon neutrality achieved by 2060. In allocating billions of dollars to the Climate Change South-South Cooperation Fund, China is showing leadership in helping developing countries’ climate efforts and has publicly recognised the important role of forests in the Congo Basin.

On the climate crisis front, therefore, China and France can walk away with a shared win. Their common ground could emerge from an unexpected region – the Congo Basin in Africa. Accelerated degradation of the Congo Basin forests, the second-largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon, is a harsh reality.