Home to a staggering array of biodiversity like forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas, the Congo Basin’s importance for both climate and biodiversity cannot be overstated
Following the mapping in 2017 of vast peatlands beneath the forest containing a staggering 30 billion tons of carbon, scientists now believe that the Congo Basin is the world’s most vital rainforest carbon sink, absorbing more CO2 than even the Amazon rainforest.
The importance of the Basin’s forests was recognised at Glasgow’s climate conference COP26 when 12 donors – including the UK, USA, Norway and France – signed the Congo Basin Pledge, committing $1.5 billion to protect these iconic landscapes.
So far, the Congo Basin has been less severely ravaged by international business interests than the forests of South America and South-East Asia.
Yet the global thirst for minerals, timber and farmland looms large over the region’s forests – and only looks likely to grow, placing the Congo Basin and its ecosystems at great risk.
Mining the forest
The growing global demand for minerals, including those deemed essential for the energy transition, is starting to leave its mark on the region’s forests.
More than a quarter (an estimated 27%) of the region’s intact forests now overlap with mining permits, according to Earth Insight.
With new mines come new roads and railways for transporting minerals, compounding any potential impact on surrounding ecosystems.
In particular, the spectre of iron-ore mining threatens to inflict serious damage on the intact forest landscapes of the tri-border region that connect the Basin countries of Gabon, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, where some of the region’s most iconic national parks – also vital ape and forest elephant habitats – can be found.
In recent years, governments in Congo Basin countries have begun striking deals with transnational corporations interested in expanding their mining operations in the region.
In February 2023, the Gabonese government signed a convention with an Australian mining conglomerate giving them access to the Belinga deposit.
One of the largest of its kind, this iron ore deposit lies in once intact forest just outside Minkébé national park – a gorilla habitat and the Congo Basin’s greatest refuge for forest elephants.
The Belinga mine is also linked with a proposed new railway line that would cut through the forest, connecting the mine with the port of Mayumba.
South African and German engineering firms are reportedly well positioned to gain the contract to construct the railroad.
Similarly, the Cameroon government has signed a deal with Chinese-backed investors to build the “Mbalam-Kribi railway”.
The new line would provide a route to Kribi port for iron ore which is to be mined at Mbalam, in Cameroon’s forested East Province.
Elsewhere in the region, smaller-scale, mostly Chinese companies are opening up new forested areas for gold mining, often with devastating environmental consequences.
IPIS, a Belgian NGO, has reported that a Chinese-linked company was involved in destructive gold mining inside the boundaries of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a refuge not only for the rare and endemic Okapi – also known as the forest giraffe – but for a diverse range of primates and other fauna.
A 2020 investigation documented similar issues in the Sangha region of the Republic of Congo, revealing that Chinese gold miners linked to deforestation and water pollution had pushed the locality to the “brink of an ecological disaster.”
Meanwhile, in Cameroon, landscapes in the East Province have also become scarred by hazardous abandoned gold mining pits, that have cost dozens of lives according to research by local NGO FODER.
And in Gabon, the junta recently reversed a 2018 ban on artisanal gold mining, a decision that has had a destructive impact on forests in the Ogoulou district.
The timber industry – illegality persists
The logging industry remains a major force across the Congo Basin, with timber concessions blanketing tens of millions of hectares of forest.
The region’s largest country, DRC, has had a moratorium on the allocation of new logging concessions since 2002.
The measure has placed some limits on the ravages of the logging industry – but seems to be hanging from a thread with the DRC’s environment minister having announced plans to lift it.
Some of the biggest logging operations ongoing in DRC – run by Chinese companies – remain plagued by systematic illegalities, according to an undercover investigation published by Environmental Investigation Agency US in October this year.
In some cases, logging companies are eyeing the prospect of making money from carbon credits rather than continuing logging.
A number of timber concessions in DRC have reportedly been repurposed for the carbon market, though the process has been criticised as opaque and legally questionable.
Similar questions have raised about carbon credit projects linked to logging companies in Gabon.
Elsewhere, the timber industry appears to be opening up new areas of forest for exploitation.
In Cameroon, plans to allocate the highly biodiverse Ebo forest – a proposed national park – to a logging company have caused dismay amongst environmentalists and local communities.
Agribusiness threats – seeds of forest destruction?
Agribusiness plantations have already left their indelible mark on the Congo Basin’s forests.
As a 2022 Global Witness investigation showed, the rubber industry has been a major deforestation driver in the region, arguably wreaking even more destruction than palm oil.
Companies such as Olam and Halcyon Agri have in the past razed thousands of hectares to create plantations, though for the time being both of these agri-giants have announced “zero deforestation” commitments.
The most controversial recent agro-industrial project to scar the Congo Basin landscape has been Camvert SA, a palm oil company based next to Cameroon’s Campo Ma’an national park, which has so far cleared over 6,000 hectares of forest.
In Dja-et-Lobo district, there are ongoing concerns about a French-owned company called RubberCam that has reportedly been cutting forest for a new plantation, and is participating in a land dispute with local Indigenous Baka communities.
In Gabon, communities have protested a UAE-based company’s plans for a eucalyptus monoculture plantation that would also generate carbon credits.
While the Congo Basin has suffered less from the ravages of agribusiness than rainforests in Brazil or Indonesia, linked deforestation remains a threat that is not to be discounted.
Oil and gas – forests under the hammer again?
Attempts by the DRC government to auction off a range of oil exploration blocks have caused alarm amongst environmentalists.
Several blocks put up for auction in 2021 were located in the heart of the Congo Basin rainforest – in some cases overlapping Salonga National Park and areas of carbon-rich peatlands.
Having seemingly failed to attract oil companies to bid, DRC’s oil minister announced in November 2024 that the oil auction would be relaunched, though this time it would exclude areas overlapping peatlands and protected areas.
Neighbouring Republic of Congo has also been trying to sell off oil blocks in its forested north, but has had little apparent success in attracting major investors.
In 2024, its government signed a production sharing contractwith a Congolese oil company that was named in a 2020 Global Witness investigation.
The contract gives the firm access to an oil block in Loukolela, a region rich in forests and peatlands.
Whether this oil block – named Ngoki II – will turn out to be commercially viable remains to be seen.
However, just outside of the Congo rainforest, fossil fuel expansion is threatening some of central Africa’s prize conservation areas.
In the Republic of Congo, the coastal Conkouati-Douli National Park – an important gorilla and chimpanzee habitat – is under threat following the granting of exploration rights to a Chinese oil firm.
What does the future hold?
The perils facing the Congo Basin are driven in large part by demand for commodities in high-income countries and in China – from iron ore and timber to rubber and oil.
Activists in Cameroon, DRC and other countries across the region are fighting to save their forests. But the future of these precious ecosystems is hanging in the balance.
COP30, taking place in Pará, Brazil, at the gateway to the Amazon River, must be a moment of accountability and delivery for world leaders who have pledged to end deforestation by 2030.
