Hello Partners,

It is a pleasure to update you on recent activities of the CBFP Facilitation.  Please see below various ongoing and upcoming items of interest.

1.     New CBFP Partner: the Univ. of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has made an application to become the newest official CBFP Partner.  UCLA has a long history of research in the region and offers the Center for Integrative Development as a resource platform for all partners.  Unless there are any objections, we will welcome UCLA into the CBFP without delay.

2.      Facilitation Advisory Committee members: The CBFP will benefit from a strong group of advisory members, including several representatives of civil society.  We will soon be contacting some 12 organizations to confirm their availability to advise the CBFP for the remainder of the U.S. Facilitation term (until 2015).

3.      Washington Diplomatic Reception: On Jan. 15th CBFP partners present in Washington enjoyed an evening of debate and discussion on central Africa’s environmental challenges with members of the African diplomatic corps based in the U.S. capital.  See photo link: http://goo.gl/g5ZyxR

4.      The 14^th CBFP Meeting: the Facilitation reports that consortium partners have been working very hard to define logistics for the next CBFP meeting.  We are now targeting Sept. 2014 for the next full CBFP gathering.  More details will be forthcoming as soon as a definite venue and specific dates can be proposed.

5.      Please tell us your plans for celebrating World Wildlife Day, March 3.  If you plan events, awareness campaigns or other activities, please let us know so we can highlight them on the CBFP website:  www.pfbc-cbfp.org/home.html  and Facebook page:  www.facebook.com/pages/Congo-Basin-Forest-Partnership

6.      The ad hoc Committee to support the COMIFAC Heads of State Summit has already met this year, and reports that much progress has been made to advance priority dossiers for an eventual summit in coming months.

7.      The Facilitation team will travel to engage our Great Lakes Partners next month; the CBFP Facilitation Team looks forward to consulting with partners in Rwanda and Burundi.  Positive engagement and planning is critical to assure success as Burundi takes on the rotating presidency of COMIFAC later this year.

The U.S. Facilitation Team

Congo Basin Forest Partnership