The Congo Basin
the Second Largest Tropical Forest in the World
In 2023 leaders, scientists and policymakers from the Amazon, the Congo and the Borneo-Mekong basins met in Brazzaville, in the Republic of Congo, to discuss how to save these tropical forests from destruction. Unfortunately this meeting went unnoticed, according to Prof Simon Lewis, from Leeds University and chair of the Congo Basin Science Initiative.
The Congo Basin covers six African countries and 130 million people live there, as well as about 10,000 plant species, 30% of which are only found in the region and endangered animals such as elephants, okapis, mountain gorillas and bonobos. Rivers that rise in the basin feed the rest of the continent. Logging and mining are increasing, but much of the forest is still untouched. It’s one of the last big carbon sinks in the world, absorbing 600 million tonnes of CO2 a year, but this is decreasing due to accelerating deforestation.
However, although scientists agree about the importance of the Congo basin a report by the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry revealed the paucity of funding it receives. Between 2008 and 2022, the world’s three main rainforest regions received a combined total of $20bn (£15bn) in international funding. Of that, $9.3bn (47%) went to the Amazon basin, $7.4bn (37%) to south-east Asia, and only $3.2bn (16%) to the Congo basin.
“You’ve got this critical ecosystem, but there just aren’t enough local scientists working to understand it,” says Lee White, an honorary professor at the University of Stirling and former environment minister in Gabon. He recommends training 1,000 PhD level scientists, which would take a decade.
“We don’t want to wait 10 years,” says Raphael Tshimanga, a professor of hydrology and water at the University of Kinshasa, and co-chair of CBSI. “It needs to start happening now. How does this happen? By mobilising human resources and attracting funding. We don’t just want nice speeches at summits.”
Part of the reason for the lack of funding goes back to Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.”
“Central Africa has this reputation as a place of corruption and instability,”says White. Corruption is a problem in the region, but this is overused as an excuse for not investing in the region.
“It’s very easy and lazy to say that Africans are corrupt,” says Arlette Soudan-Nonault, the Republic of Congo’s environment minister. Admittedly there’s been conflict in the DRC for over three decades. However, “It is the last frontier of climate change,” the minister says. “Supporting the Congo basin is not charity. It’s about recognising its role in protecting the Earth through its carbon sink. The people of the Congo basin have tightened their belts so that the world can breathe – and we receive no compensation.”