Jean-Yves Ollivier appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the Congo Basin Blue Fund

In this capacity, the President of Brazzaville Foundation will be in charge of mobilisation financial resources for the Blue Fund, alongside HRH Princess Lalla Hasnaa, President of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Mrs Maria de Fatima Jardim, Angola's Minister of the Environment, and musician Lokua Kanza, who have also been appointed Goodwill Ambassadors.

"I'm honoured and delighted to be appointed Goodwill Ambassador. It represents a strong sign of credibility and recognition for all the work that Brazzaville Foundation has accomplished to date. As the initiator of the original idea of the Blue Fund, we have been with the Commission since the first talks surrounding its creation, and it is with the same degree of commitment that we will redouble our efforts in the mobilisation of financial resources," declared Jean-Yves Ollivier.

The Blue Fund initiative, conceived by Brazzaville Foundation, was born of the growing deforestation of the Congo Basin region, the planet's second largest ecological lung after Amazonia. The Blue Fund will subsidize projects to preserve the unique ecosystems of the 220 million hectares of the Congo Basin and ensure sustainable economic development for the region's hundred million inhabitants.

The Blue Fund project received the support of the President of the Republic of Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso, who took it to COP 22 in Morocco in 2016. More than twenty countries on the African continent have joined the initiative, signing the memorandum creating the Blue Fund at the first summit in Oyo (Republic of Congo) in March 2017. On the front line at the Brazzaville Summit, the Kingdom of Morocco, through the personal commitment of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, is one of these players.

The Brazzaville Foundation is pleased to note the adhesion of new countries, to support attentively the realisation of the study of prefiguration, and moreover, to accompany assiduously all the stages which will lead to the full concretisation of this great project.

To read the declaration by the Heads of State and Government of the Congo Basin Climate Commission, click here.