Gabon Special Economic Zone

Tropical rain forest covers about 80% of the West African nation of Gabon, part of the Congo Basin and the "lungs of the world." Gabon is one of the first nations to earn revenue from carbon sequestration...as long as the rain forest remains intact. There are economic pressures for logging (and also the shared global threat of illegal logging). The federal government, along with private investors, is striving to both preserve the rain forest and also to create more jobs and capture more export value from the forest products industry as the nation transitions away from extractive industries including oil. The venture needs to bring almost all of the supply chain from logging camps to bark processing to plywood manufacture to international wholesaling in this series of public private partnerships. What are the conditions precedent for this to be feasible? What are the capital, policy, and operational decisions and inputs needed to execute this strategy successfully? What risks need to be borne by whom to get the supply chain in place and attract other capital sources? This is more than just a special economic zone with some tax and energy benefits. Among other tools, Gabon has adopted sophisticated techniques to geo-tag lumber from stump to ship, and to track the chain of custody for certified forest products. What other decisions need to be made and resources committed? Can this model grow to scale and be replicated with other agricultural or renewable value chains, in other nations? When?