With Patrick Bourgeois Bakwa

The Congo Basin, the second largest green lung on the planet after the Amazon, plays a crucial role in the fight against climate change thanks to its vast forests, exceptional biodiversity and peatlands that store huge amounts of CO2. However, this ecosystem is threatened by armed conflicts that have lasted for nearly two decades, the illegal exploitation of natural resources and poaching, against a backdrop of sexual violence particularly targeting women Ecoguards who secure all these natural banks, but also emblematic animal species such as gorillas, elephants (hunted for their ivory tips), and pangolins, whose claws are marketed in Asia.
This conference proposes to take a deep look at a lost and often forgotten corner of humanity, a wounded population that pays the price of many riches and natural resources that the Congo Basin abounds, highly coveted and adulated by Western and multinational powers. 

Patrick Bourgeois Bakwa, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a journalist, writer, poet, playwright, researcher and environmental activist. He is a Senior Expert in Biodiversity and Carbon Credit, a member of the Quebec Environment Network and coordinator of the Research Center for Renewable Energies and Carbon Credit (CREERC-Congo Basin). A tireless traveller, inspired and passionate about nature, Patrick Bourgeois Bakwa lives in Canada. His latest novel Virus sur Virunga, published a few weeks ago by Éditions Essor-Livres in Canada, illustrates the bleak picture of the forests of the Congo Basin, to say the least.

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