Transcripts For BBCNEWS HARDtalk 20240714 : vimarsana.com

Night for all of us, now on bbc news. And dealing with people is politics. And temperatures ranging its hardtalk with stephen sackur. Between 11 14 degrees. 0n into friday, low pressure to the north of the uk. A Conveyor Belt of cloud and rain streaming in off the atlantic but im just guessing will bring quite a lot of rainfall welcome to hardtalk. With your background as a zoologist, im stephen sackur. A man who spent a lot in fact to parts of the north and the west of the uk, our planet is haemorrhaging natural of time out in the field, particularly across west resources at an alarming rate. In nature, often pristine nature, and south west scotland, biodiversity is under threat into northern ireland. As forests are felled, im guessing that perhaps you didnt rainfall totals really wild animals illegally hunted. Actually like dealing mounting up here. But further south and east, again, with people that much. Yes, i started as a closer to the High Pressure over anti social biologist. The near continent then, in my first five years it should tend to stay in gabon i barely came out dry with sunny spells, and again, feeling quite warm my guest today is on the frontline of the forest so i 2a, 25 degrees. Barely met anybody. Over the years i went the mid to high teens of the effort to conserve again further north. And protect what remains. From being a zoologist to botanist now, into the weekend, lee white is the newly appointed to archaeologist, that it remains fairly unsettled, environment minister started bringing me a bit with further wind and in the west african state of gabon. More towards people. Certainly some rain around. And then it will turn even cooler as we head on into part two of the weekend, as we see winds a country famed for its tropical switch to a north westerly forests, its elephants and gorillas. Direction. But also notorious for systemic so, as we move out of friday corruption and inequality. And into saturday, this next feature so can gabon find a sustainable will bring quite a lot of rainfall balance between the needs 00 01 42,283 4294966103 13 29,430 of man and nature . Again to northern and western areas. And then at a point there by this point, we could be looking was a choice, do i keep on studying at a few issues across south west the forests and the wildlife scotland, for dumfries and galloway, whilst they disappear . Maybe four inches of rain falling or do i move in to a much more by the time saturdays out. Active conservation role . You felt it was as urgent as that . But this rain band will pivot round, pushing to western england, parts of wales, sunshine absolutely, yeah. And showers follow on behind. If you look at the way the planet but it still stays dry and fairly is going and the way africas warm across the far south east wildlife is going, its a crisis. 20 211 degrees. And some people do manage something cooler pushing into the north west. But as that front clears just to keep studying. Through during saturday night, but i couldnt do that. Then it opens the floodgates to a polar maritime north westerly, and thatll be very noticeable right up and down the country. A lot of people wont know gabon. So a much fresher start to the day. Its a relatively small country in terms of population. I know its very sizeable, but its fewer than 2 Million People plenty of sunshine and showers on the Atlantic Coast of africa. Across northern and western areas. A few heavy, maybe thundery ones mixed in. Again it could be the south and east why gabon for you . That stays dry in the sunshine, youd had no connection there. But temperatures will struggle as a biologist, i was looking ranging from 12 to 17 or 18 degrees. For the place where i would see the gorillas and the elephants and the chimpanzees and wildlife, Something Like it wouldve been like before humans had high powered rifles and started eliminating everything. And so it really was random drift in a way, i decided to do a phd, i wrote to all of the eminent scientists around the world who were studying how forestry impacts wildlife which is the subject i decided to study, and i got one letter back and it was from a british woman, called caroline chuton, who had been in gabon for about ten years. The railway had opened up the rainforests of central gabon to forestry and caroline wrote back to me and said, come along, we really need to understand what the impact of this increased pressure on the forest is going to have. By 2009, a decade ago, you had been appointed to be the chief, the boss, of the Gabon National parks agency. A very, very sizeable operation. Because i think there are, what, 13 National Parks in gabon. Something like two thirds or more of the country is covered in forest. So youve got a big territory. It was a big job, yeah. Youve already talked about the pressures, the balance between man and nature. How, in thatjob, did you preserve the forest, given that one of the Key Industries in gabon is derived from logging and timber trade . You have to go back a little bit in the story. In 2002, i met 0mar bongo who had been president of the country for a long time. Was president of the country for over a0 years. Yes. And we could call him if, i dont know if youd quarrel with us, but an african dictator. I would quarrel with that. I would call him an african chief, myself. Dictator is a very hard and a very negative word. He was the president in a one party system for 20 years and then he was the president welcome to bbc news, in a Multi Party System im mike embley. With elections and he won our top stories the elections and when he died, i was actually in a Climate Change negotiation in bonn when he died and i headed back to gabon. Borisjohnsons suspension of parliament sparks protests and condemnation. Opponents of a no deal brexit are calling the prime ministers when i got back to gabon, move a constitutional outrage. The queue to pay respects in front of his coffin went three times around the president ial palace and theyd had to open the gates upgraded to a category1 hurricane, because theyjust couldnt deal storm dorian hits the us with the numbers of people. So i think dictator is unfair. Virgin islands as it heads for the mainland. At least 20 people are killed in a firebomb attack on a nightclub in mexico. Several more are seriously hurt. Well revisit your relationship climate activist Greta Thunberg with the ruling family later, arrives in new york, because it is important because its after 15 days crossing the atlantic under sail, to minimise carbon emissions. Politics and you are now a senior and important minister in the gabonese government, so well come back to politics because, of course, the bongo family still rules gabon through the son of omar bongo, ali bongo. But ijust want to come back first of all to forestry. Because it seems to me its a very important test case of what you have tried to achieve in your career. So explain to me, given we know that gabon is systematically corrupt, there is endemic corruption in gabon, and we know that illegal logging is a lucrative business, how you as director of National Parks, tried to fight that. When 0mar bongo created the parks system, there was forestry in all of the protected areas of gabon. And gabon was going the way of ivory coast. Ivory coast today has 3 of its forests left. 80 of its parks have been deforested. And when we showed 0mar bongo Beautiful National geographic photographs of the natural treasures of gabon, something clicked. A spark, a catalyst went off. And within a couple of months wed created 13 National Parks, preserving some of the most beautiful and the richest parts of gabon. Jacques chirac, who was president of france at the time, came and tried to convince 0mar bongo that it was a bad decision. The french had big logging interests in gabon. And the biggest critics of the parks were the foresters. When ali bongo 0ndimba became president , the first thing he did was to ban the export of raw timber, of unprocessed timber, and within two months president sarkozy was in gabon trying to convince him he had made the wrong mistake and that is was a silly thing to do. What 0mar bongo did was try to shift the paradigm of development in africa. Britain, china, the us, have all been developed on cheap, Raw Materials from africa. And if were going to develop african countries, if were going to find the balance between the preservation and the sustainable use of these Natural Resources, at least a good proportion of the wealth that comes from the exploitation of those Natural Resources has to come back into africa. And so the reason that, i guess, that im a government minister as well as a conservationist today is to find that balance, you cant do conservation in isolation, you are part of a system. But to come back to my point about how prepared you are to take on vested interests which are undermining the efforts you and others have made in the country to preserve and protect, im very mindful, for example, that here you sit as environment minister, your predecessor was sacked because of a scandal involving the illegal cutting down and trading of precious timber to the tune of some say hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of this timber was found in containers inside gabon. The Vice President ended up losing hisjob over this. Your predecessor, the environment minister. So im suggesting to you that your job is going to involve you taking on some very powerful vested interests. Ive been doing that for years in gabon. Ive been fighting the illegal ivory trade, where youre dealing with even terrorists groups. Ive been fighting illegalforestry. Weve only had two cases of illegal forestry inside the National Parks of gabon in the last decade. Ive been fighting illegal gold. Between those three illegal industries, i was dealing with maybe 300 400 million of turnover and some very unpleasant organisations and people. And we managed to do it. One of the reasons we managed to do that is because i had very strong support from the president himself. But the question, partly, is whether youve been successful. I should say, the two politicians you have always denied their involvement in this wood scandal, but nevertheless they lost their jobs. But it goes beyond wood. It involves the trading of ivory because people may know that gabon has one of the most important populations of forest elephants in the world. Gabon has 10 of africas forests and today, tragically, we have 60 of the forest elephants because theyve disappeared everywhere else. But my point, i guess, is despite your best efforts, and youve just outlined how committed you were to protection, im looking at figures here. According to the data ive seen from reputed scientists, in the 1980s, gabon had between 60,000 and 65,000 forest elephants. Today its believe to have perhaps 25,000 or fewer. So it has lost most of its forest elephants. Today we have about 45,000. Really . We dont like to give that figure very often because we think it might attract the poachers, actually. But even if you take the optimistic figure, you have lost what, say 20,000 . Its not an optimistic figure. Im a scientist, you know, at the base. Im one of the world experts on forest elephants. Well, then i will take yourfigure. If you have a look at any of the publications, we certainly do have, we have 60 of the 90,000, 95,000 forest elephants that are surviving. We lost 25,000 forest elephants in a gabon between 2006 and about 2012, 13 14. It was we think it could be directly related to the cites decision in 2006 to allow illegal trade of ivory. And theres a very big debate going on right now at cites as to whether or not we should once again allow countries to sell ivory. And that sent a signal to the poachers and poaching just. Actually poaching and with the gold price going up around the world almost exponentially, ivory and gold, kind of, exploiters moved into the forests of gabon and the government wasnt ready. That was a failure. It was a failure for the gabonese government and for the conservation community. The government didnt have a National Park service at that point and all the conservation money was going to international ngos. And we all failed, collectively. I see your response was interesting. You decided, in essence, to declare this a war. I mean, you exponentially increased the number of park rangers, you gave some of them weapons, you talked about a bloody conflict with the poachers. You said, we have become paramilitary. Weve had to turn biologists into soldiers, policemen, and spies. Ive gone from professor white, the scientist, to being a sworn in police officer. Yeah, i never thought that was going to be my path in life, but. But is it working, thats the question, is it working . Those elephants are still there. Those parks are intact. And were moving out of the parks, creating Good Governance of Natural Resources outside of the parks. Theres this strong motivation to establish Natural Resource governance. Were realising, everyone, that if we dont get it right were going to end up like Central African republic, for example, where 35 years ago car was a tropical paradise like gabon, and then the poachers moved in from the north, from chad, sudan. They killed the rhinos and then they killed the elephants and they killed the big game and then they killed the small game and they became bandits, robbers, rebels. Theres a very clear link between Natural Resource governance in africa and peace and security. And so. And clean governance, too. Exactly, yeah. If you plot a graph of elephant numbers against some measure of Good Governance or low corruption, you get almost a straight line. What about two other things that you have specifically said you believe can be helpful. One is more tourism. Youve sort of blown the trumpet for getting more visitors into gabon, which, again, might seem counter intuitive to a commitment to protection and conservation, and, secondly, palm oil. You seem to be a big fan of expanding palm Oil Operations in gabon. We need to develop our country. We have a raising population. Were a country that has been, for a long time, living on an oil based economy. And, as you see the amazon forests burning on the news, you realise that there isnt a future for oil based economies with Climate Change. And so gabon has to diversify its economy. Oil palm is just a fact of life. It is the most productive Oil Producing plant that you can grow in the tropics. But it does suck up, as weve seen in countries like indonesia, last tracts of virgin forest. It comes down to management. Where do you do oil palm . Do you do oil palm in degraded areas, in savannah areas . Or do you do it in pristine rainforest. In gabon we have a National Plan that only allows oil palm in the most degraded habitats. And more tourists, with more roads, more flights coming in, all of the infrastructure that comes with hotels and everything connected with the leisure and tourism business, thats all good, is it, for these protected areas . Again, its a matter of management. If you look at botswana, where people tend to fly, rather than drive, and you do high end, low throughput tourism, when you are giving people quality jobs, then tourism is a positive thing for Natural Resource governments. If you dont control it, if you let it get out of hand, as anything, whether its agricultural, forestry, whatever. Well, thats interesting. What you keep coming back to is the need for responsible governance, for clever and responsible government. Why should we believe, even though you have nowjoined the government, that gabon is capable of that sort of governance, given that, right now, the president , your boss, is, according to many in your own country, incapable of fulfilling his job. We believe he had a stroke late last year. Hes rarely seen in public. Youre one of the last people seem pictured with him in public. So lets get your view. It is president ali bongo fit to govern your country . He is. Hes weakened by his stroke. He is walking like an old man, if you saw the images of him at the independence day. Mentally hes. I would say, its actually interesting. Mentally, the french side of his brain is 100 . Hes lost a little bit of his english. So hes totally fluent and with it in french, but his english has suffered slightly. So hes. Hes definitely there and hes definitely in charge. So no question for you, hes fit to govern . Hes fit to govern, yes. Even in the deeper sense of a man who has been accused by, again, many people in his own country and many outside of being part of a kleptocratic regime, going back to his father, who governed for more than a0 years, we know from the french investigation that the family have vast assets stored away abroad, much of it in paris and in france, including a whole fleet of luxury vehicles, the us senate reported on the movement of 100 million in what they regarded as suspect transactions, youre happy to sit in that government . Im proud, actually, to be a government minister in gabon. I think what were trying to do in gabon is to create a new vision for africa. But do you do you sit and think about this sort of details i have just mentioned in the nature of the. Of course i do. But youre presenting it in a very biased way. Youre citing that small proportion of 100 negative opposition politicians who always portray these things. Well, no, im actually citing french authorities and the us authorities, and the world bank, which points out that despite its being a major oil producer, at least a third of the gabonese people live in poverty today. There is massive inequality in that country. There is. And ijust wonder when you sit in the government whether you think that you can deliver what you want to deliver given the climate in which you have to operate. Ive been working in gabon for over 30 years. Ive been gabonese for about 15 years. Ive been through some quite tough negotiations over time and ive dealt with some very difficult situations. And ive come through that. In a system where we genuinely are trying to get it right, in a system where we really do have these Conveyor Belt<\/a> of cloud and rain streaming in off the atlantic but im just guessing will bring quite a lot of rainfall welcome to hardtalk. With your background as a zoologist, im stephen sackur. A man who spent a lot in fact to parts of the north and the west of the uk, our planet is haemorrhaging natural of time out in the field, particularly across west resources at an alarming rate. In nature, often pristine nature, and south west scotland, biodiversity is under threat into northern ireland. As forests are felled, im guessing that perhaps you didnt rainfall totals really wild animals illegally hunted. Actually like dealing mounting up here. But further south and east, again, with people that much. Yes, i started as a closer to the High Pressure<\/a> over anti social biologist. The near continent then, in my first five years it should tend to stay in gabon i barely came out dry with sunny spells, and again, feeling quite warm my guest today is on the frontline of the forest so i 2a, 25 degrees. Barely met anybody. Over the years i went the mid to high teens of the effort to conserve again further north. And protect what remains. From being a zoologist to botanist now, into the weekend, lee white is the newly appointed to archaeologist, that it remains fairly unsettled, environment minister started bringing me a bit with further wind and in the west african state of gabon. More towards people. Certainly some rain around. And then it will turn even cooler as we head on into part two of the weekend, as we see winds a country famed for its tropical switch to a north westerly forests, its elephants and gorillas. Direction. But also notorious for systemic so, as we move out of friday corruption and inequality. And into saturday, this next feature so can gabon find a sustainable will bring quite a lot of rainfall balance between the needs 00 01 42,283 4294966103 13 29,430 of man and nature . Again to northern and western areas. And then at a point there by this point, we could be looking was a choice, do i keep on studying at a few issues across south west the forests and the wildlife scotland, for dumfries and galloway, whilst they disappear . Maybe four inches of rain falling or do i move in to a much more by the time saturdays out. Active conservation role . You felt it was as urgent as that . But this rain band will pivot round, pushing to western england, parts of wales, sunshine absolutely, yeah. And showers follow on behind. If you look at the way the planet but it still stays dry and fairly is going and the way africas warm across the far south east wildlife is going, its a crisis. 20 211 degrees. And some people do manage something cooler pushing into the north west. But as that front clears just to keep studying. Through during saturday night, but i couldnt do that. Then it opens the floodgates to a polar maritime north westerly, and thatll be very noticeable right up and down the country. A lot of people wont know gabon. So a much fresher start to the day. Its a relatively small country in terms of population. I know its very sizeable, but its fewer than 2 Million People<\/a> plenty of sunshine and showers on the Atlantic Coast<\/a> of africa. Across northern and western areas. A few heavy, maybe thundery ones mixed in. Again it could be the south and east why gabon for you . That stays dry in the sunshine, youd had no connection there. But temperatures will struggle as a biologist, i was looking ranging from 12 to 17 or 18 degrees. For the place where i would see the gorillas and the elephants and the chimpanzees and wildlife, Something Like<\/a> it wouldve been like before humans had high powered rifles and started eliminating everything. And so it really was random drift in a way, i decided to do a phd, i wrote to all of the eminent scientists around the world who were studying how forestry impacts wildlife which is the subject i decided to study, and i got one letter back and it was from a british woman, called caroline chuton, who had been in gabon for about ten years. The railway had opened up the rainforests of central gabon to forestry and caroline wrote back to me and said, come along, we really need to understand what the impact of this increased pressure on the forest is going to have. By 2009, a decade ago, you had been appointed to be the chief, the boss, of the Gabon National<\/a> parks agency. A very, very sizeable operation. Because i think there are, what, 13 National Parks<\/a> in gabon. Something like two thirds or more of the country is covered in forest. So youve got a big territory. It was a big job, yeah. Youve already talked about the pressures, the balance between man and nature. How, in thatjob, did you preserve the forest, given that one of the Key Industries<\/a> in gabon is derived from logging and timber trade . You have to go back a little bit in the story. In 2002, i met 0mar bongo who had been president of the country for a long time. Was president of the country for over a0 years. Yes. And we could call him if, i dont know if youd quarrel with us, but an african dictator. I would quarrel with that. I would call him an african chief, myself. Dictator is a very hard and a very negative word. He was the president in a one party system for 20 years and then he was the president welcome to bbc news, in a Multi Party System<\/a> im mike embley. With elections and he won our top stories the elections and when he died, i was actually in a Climate Change<\/a> negotiation in bonn when he died and i headed back to gabon. Borisjohnsons suspension of parliament sparks protests and condemnation. Opponents of a no deal brexit are calling the prime ministers when i got back to gabon, move a constitutional outrage. The queue to pay respects in front of his coffin went three times around the president ial palace and theyd had to open the gates upgraded to a category1 hurricane, because theyjust couldnt deal storm dorian hits the us with the numbers of people. So i think dictator is unfair. Virgin islands as it heads for the mainland. At least 20 people are killed in a firebomb attack on a nightclub in mexico. Several more are seriously hurt. Well revisit your relationship climate activist Greta Thunberg<\/a> with the ruling family later, arrives in new york, because it is important because its after 15 days crossing the atlantic under sail, to minimise carbon emissions. Politics and you are now a senior and important minister in the gabonese government, so well come back to politics because, of course, the bongo family still rules gabon through the son of omar bongo, ali bongo. But ijust want to come back first of all to forestry. Because it seems to me its a very important test case of what you have tried to achieve in your career. So explain to me, given we know that gabon is systematically corrupt, there is endemic corruption in gabon, and we know that illegal logging is a lucrative business, how you as director of National Parks<\/a>, tried to fight that. When 0mar bongo created the parks system, there was forestry in all of the protected areas of gabon. And gabon was going the way of ivory coast. Ivory coast today has 3 of its forests left. 80 of its parks have been deforested. And when we showed 0mar bongo Beautiful National<\/a> geographic photographs of the natural treasures of gabon, something clicked. A spark, a catalyst went off. And within a couple of months wed created 13 National Parks<\/a>, preserving some of the most beautiful and the richest parts of gabon. Jacques chirac, who was president of france at the time, came and tried to convince 0mar bongo that it was a bad decision. The french had big logging interests in gabon. And the biggest critics of the parks were the foresters. When ali bongo 0ndimba became president , the first thing he did was to ban the export of raw timber, of unprocessed timber, and within two months president sarkozy was in gabon trying to convince him he had made the wrong mistake and that is was a silly thing to do. What 0mar bongo did was try to shift the paradigm of development in africa. Britain, china, the us, have all been developed on cheap, Raw Materials<\/a> from africa. And if were going to develop african countries, if were going to find the balance between the preservation and the sustainable use of these Natural Resources<\/a>, at least a good proportion of the wealth that comes from the exploitation of those Natural Resources<\/a> has to come back into africa. And so the reason that, i guess, that im a government minister as well as a conservationist today is to find that balance, you cant do conservation in isolation, you are part of a system. But to come back to my point about how prepared you are to take on vested interests which are undermining the efforts you and others have made in the country to preserve and protect, im very mindful, for example, that here you sit as environment minister, your predecessor was sacked because of a scandal involving the illegal cutting down and trading of precious timber to the tune of some say hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of this timber was found in containers inside gabon. The Vice President<\/a> ended up losing hisjob over this. Your predecessor, the environment minister. So im suggesting to you that your job is going to involve you taking on some very powerful vested interests. Ive been doing that for years in gabon. Ive been fighting the illegal ivory trade, where youre dealing with even terrorists groups. Ive been fighting illegalforestry. Weve only had two cases of illegal forestry inside the National Parks<\/a> of gabon in the last decade. Ive been fighting illegal gold. Between those three illegal industries, i was dealing with maybe 300 400 million of turnover and some very unpleasant organisations and people. And we managed to do it. One of the reasons we managed to do that is because i had very strong support from the president himself. But the question, partly, is whether youve been successful. I should say, the two politicians you have always denied their involvement in this wood scandal, but nevertheless they lost their jobs. But it goes beyond wood. It involves the trading of ivory because people may know that gabon has one of the most important populations of forest elephants in the world. Gabon has 10 of africas forests and today, tragically, we have 60 of the forest elephants because theyve disappeared everywhere else. But my point, i guess, is despite your best efforts, and youve just outlined how committed you were to protection, im looking at figures here. According to the data ive seen from reputed scientists, in the 1980s, gabon had between 60,000 and 65,000 forest elephants. Today its believe to have perhaps 25,000 or fewer. So it has lost most of its forest elephants. Today we have about 45,000. Really . We dont like to give that figure very often because we think it might attract the poachers, actually. But even if you take the optimistic figure, you have lost what, say 20,000 . Its not an optimistic figure. Im a scientist, you know, at the base. Im one of the world experts on forest elephants. Well, then i will take yourfigure. If you have a look at any of the publications, we certainly do have, we have 60 of the 90,000, 95,000 forest elephants that are surviving. We lost 25,000 forest elephants in a gabon between 2006 and about 2012, 13 14. It was we think it could be directly related to the cites decision in 2006 to allow illegal trade of ivory. And theres a very big debate going on right now at cites as to whether or not we should once again allow countries to sell ivory. And that sent a signal to the poachers and poaching just. Actually poaching and with the gold price going up around the world almost exponentially, ivory and gold, kind of, exploiters moved into the forests of gabon and the government wasnt ready. That was a failure. It was a failure for the gabonese government and for the conservation community. The government didnt have a National Park<\/a> service at that point and all the conservation money was going to international ngos. And we all failed, collectively. I see your response was interesting. You decided, in essence, to declare this a war. I mean, you exponentially increased the number of park rangers, you gave some of them weapons, you talked about a bloody conflict with the poachers. You said, we have become paramilitary. Weve had to turn biologists into soldiers, policemen, and spies. Ive gone from professor white, the scientist, to being a sworn in police officer. Yeah, i never thought that was going to be my path in life, but. But is it working, thats the question, is it working . Those elephants are still there. Those parks are intact. And were moving out of the parks, creating Good Governance<\/a> of Natural Resources<\/a> outside of the parks. Theres this strong motivation to establish Natural Resource<\/a> governance. Were realising, everyone, that if we dont get it right were going to end up like Central African<\/a> republic, for example, where 35 years ago car was a tropical paradise like gabon, and then the poachers moved in from the north, from chad, sudan. They killed the rhinos and then they killed the elephants and they killed the big game and then they killed the small game and they became bandits, robbers, rebels. Theres a very clear link between Natural Resource<\/a> governance in africa and peace and security. And so. And clean governance, too. Exactly, yeah. If you plot a graph of elephant numbers against some measure of Good Governance<\/a> or low corruption, you get almost a straight line. What about two other things that you have specifically said you believe can be helpful. One is more tourism. Youve sort of blown the trumpet for getting more visitors into gabon, which, again, might seem counter intuitive to a commitment to protection and conservation, and, secondly, palm oil. You seem to be a big fan of expanding palm Oil Operations<\/a> in gabon. We need to develop our country. We have a raising population. Were a country that has been, for a long time, living on an oil based economy. And, as you see the amazon forests burning on the news, you realise that there isnt a future for oil based economies with Climate Change<\/a>. And so gabon has to diversify its economy. Oil palm is just a fact of life. It is the most productive Oil Producing<\/a> plant that you can grow in the tropics. But it does suck up, as weve seen in countries like indonesia, last tracts of virgin forest. It comes down to management. Where do you do oil palm . Do you do oil palm in degraded areas, in savannah areas . Or do you do it in pristine rainforest. In gabon we have a National Plan<\/a> that only allows oil palm in the most degraded habitats. And more tourists, with more roads, more flights coming in, all of the infrastructure that comes with hotels and everything connected with the leisure and tourism business, thats all good, is it, for these protected areas . Again, its a matter of management. If you look at botswana, where people tend to fly, rather than drive, and you do high end, low throughput tourism, when you are giving people quality jobs, then tourism is a positive thing for Natural Resource<\/a> governments. If you dont control it, if you let it get out of hand, as anything, whether its agricultural, forestry, whatever. Well, thats interesting. What you keep coming back to is the need for responsible governance, for clever and responsible government. Why should we believe, even though you have nowjoined the government, that gabon is capable of that sort of governance, given that, right now, the president , your boss, is, according to many in your own country, incapable of fulfilling his job. We believe he had a stroke late last year. Hes rarely seen in public. Youre one of the last people seem pictured with him in public. So lets get your view. It is president ali bongo fit to govern your country . He is. Hes weakened by his stroke. He is walking like an old man, if you saw the images of him at the independence day. Mentally hes. I would say, its actually interesting. Mentally, the french side of his brain is 100 . Hes lost a little bit of his english. So hes totally fluent and with it in french, but his english has suffered slightly. So hes. Hes definitely there and hes definitely in charge. So no question for you, hes fit to govern . Hes fit to govern, yes. Even in the deeper sense of a man who has been accused by, again, many people in his own country and many outside of being part of a kleptocratic regime, going back to his father, who governed for more than a0 years, we know from the french investigation that the family have vast assets stored away abroad, much of it in paris and in france, including a whole fleet of luxury vehicles, the us senate reported on the movement of 100 million in what they regarded as suspect transactions, youre happy to sit in that government . Im proud, actually, to be a government minister in gabon. I think what were trying to do in gabon is to create a new vision for africa. But do you do you sit and think about this sort of details i have just mentioned in the nature of the. Of course i do. But youre presenting it in a very biased way. Youre citing that small proportion of 100 negative opposition politicians who always portray these things. Well, no, im actually citing french authorities and the us authorities, and the world bank, which points out that despite its being a major oil producer, at least a third of the gabonese people live in poverty today. There is massive inequality in that country. There is. And ijust wonder when you sit in the government whether you think that you can deliver what you want to deliver given the climate in which you have to operate. Ive been working in gabon for over 30 years. Ive been gabonese for about 15 years. Ive been through some quite tough negotiations over time and ive dealt with some very difficult situations. And ive come through that. In a system where we genuinely are trying to get it right, in a system where we really do have these National Parks<\/a> which are well managed, where we have more and more forestry concessions, which are well managed and certified, where the economy is more and more balanced, in a system where i work for a, you portray him in a very negative way, but i work for a very remarkable president who is one of the most intelligent human beings i have ever met and has always supported me to do myjob. Let me just ask you one last simple but perhaps very difficult question. If you want to do things which president ali bongo doesnt want you to do, theres only going to be one winner it wont be you. Its the nature of politics in that country. How far can you go push your commitment, do you think, before you run into trouble yourself . Well see. Im. I like to think that im somebody who has integrity. Thats why i have been put into. You called yourself incorruptible once. I suspect that may have been tested in gabon. I am not sure i would say that. But, ah, i have to be. Im not sure i would say it myself, just because you never know in life where life is going to take you. But if we have a difference of opinion well talk about it. And if it is irreparable, and i feel that i cant continue in the government, then obviously i would leave the government. But knowing the man i work for, i dont see that happening. I didnt take the decision lightly, two months ago, to leave the National Parks<\/a> and become a minister, to become a white politician in a black african country. I believe i can do a lot of good for the country, for its parks and wildlife, but more importantly, in a way, im the minister of forests, of the environment, as you said, of the oceans, and of Climate Change<\/a>. And the difficult part of myjob, really, is the Climate Change<\/a>","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601002.us.archive.org\/8\/items\/BBCNEWS_20190829_013000_HARDtalk\/BBCNEWS_20190829_013000_HARDtalk.thumbs\/BBCNEWS_20190829_013000_HARDtalk_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}