Conserving the Congo Basin is essential for preserving biodiversity and preventing catastrophic climate collapse. But safeguarding the flora and fauna in this precious ecosystem must be balanced with improving the lives and livelihoods of some of the poorest people in the world. Managing the region’s interconnected ecological, environmental and economic needs is one of the international community’s biggest challenges to date. Policymakers cannot afford to fail.
A precious ecosystem
Stretching 4,700km long and reaching 220m deep, the Congo is the second longest river in Africa and the deepest in the world. From its source in the highlands of northern Zambia to its mouth on the Atlantic coast of the DRC, the river snakes through thousands of miles of dense jungle and sticky marshland.
The Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River (see Figure 1). It covers 4 million km2, and spans six countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. The basin provides 30% of Africa’s fresh water and offers vital irrigation to around 77 million people.
Much of the basin is covered by tropical rainforest. The forest is second only to the Amazon in size and is the largest in Africa. Satellite images highlight its vast expanse, with the moss-like cloud of green stretching across the western side of the continent, lush and verdant even from miles overhead.
Figure 1: The Congo Basin
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Congo Basin is an extraordinarily diverse ecosystem. There are over 10,000 species of tropical plants – 30% of which cannot be found anywhere else on earth. Around 400 different mammals and 1000 species of bird call the basin their home, and below the surface of the Congo River live more than 700 species of fish (Harrison et al, 2016). The number of insects is greater still, with the area boasting 370,000 species of beetle alone. There are 550 different types of butterfly.
But the rainforest and its inhabitants are under threat. Timber extraction poses a major risk to the ecology of the region as well as to the wider climate. In 2021 deforestation in the Congo Basin increased by almost 5%, with more than 630,000 hectares of land cleared for logging (Cavallito, 2022). So, in just 12 months an area of rainforest the size of Los Angeles was stripped bare by the timber industry.
In terms of logging, the Central African Republic is the worst offender, with deforestation rates increasing by 71% from 2018 to 2021. By 2050 the Congo rainforest will have shrunk by more than a quarter, based on current trends (OFAC, 2021). This is equivalent to a forest the size of Egypt being wiped out over the next two and half decades. This would have devastating consequences for the basin’s biodiversity. From the precious birds, beetles and bonobos to the mighty elephants and fluttering butterflies, deforestation risks extinction for many of the Congo’s unique creatures.
The lungs of Africa
The Congo Basin is also a vital carbon sink. Known as ‘the lungs of Africa’, the basin’s peatlands store the equivalent of three years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions (Hess, 2024). According to research by the World Bank, the Congo rainforest is the largest carbon sink in the world, with the section of jungle in the Republic of the Congo alone absorbing 1.5% of the entire planet’s carbon emissions (World Bank, 2023).
Tropical rainforests draw in more carbon from the atmosphere than temperate or boreal forests. But they are also being destroyed at increasing speeds (for palm oil plantations and mineral mining, etc.). For example, studies show that since the early 2000s the rainforests across Southeast Asia have collectively become a net source of carbon emissions due to “clearing for plantations, uncontrolled fires and drainage of peat soils” (Harris and Gibbs, 2021). Once a certain ratio of trees is removed, the emissions caused by decaying plant matter left over from logging start to exceed the carbon absorbed by the collective photosynthesis of the woodland. Cut enough of it down and a rainforest switches from helping to clean the atmosphere to helping pollute it (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Carbon fluxes from major rainforests (gigatonnes of CO2e per year)
Source: author’s calculations based on Harris et al (2021)
The fossil fuel industry also has the Congo Basin in its crosshairs. In 2022, the DRC announced an auction for oil and gas exploration licenses, claiming it may be sitting on up to 16 million barrels of crude oil. Many of these potential reserves lie within the rainforest. The potential drilling (and associated destruction) of the Congo Basin has been labelled by environmental experts as a ‘climate bomb’, threatening “one of the last and most critical frontiers in the battle against climate breakdown” (Hess, 2024). Losing the Congo Basin’s capacity for carbon absorption could lead to disastrous consequences in terms of further increases in global temperatures and the wider meteorological and ecological implications of a rapidly warming planet. With the planet’s Amazonian and Asian lungs already wheezing, protecting the African counterpart is critical
Time is running out. Continuing to cut down the Congo Basin rainforest at current rates would mean extinction for thousands of species of plant and animal, while also puncturing one of the planet’s vital life support machines. The simultaneous destruction of precious biodiversity and critical carbon sequestration capacity would be a crushing blow to the environment.
Life in the basin
Humans have lived in the Congo Basin for tens of thousands of years. Today, the region is home to over 75 million people, including 150 different ethnic groups such as the Ba'Aka, BaMbuti, and Efe people. Although many communities living in the basin are nomadic (moving from place to place in search of food, water and shelter), a large share of the region’s people are native to the DRC – one of the poorest countries in the world. With a GDP per capita of just over $500 in 2022, around 70% of people in the DRC live on less than $2 per day (World Bank, 2024). This means about 60 million people live in what experts call ‘extreme poverty’.
Figure 3: GDP per capita, DRC (2015 USD)
Source: World Bank (accessed via the Economics Observatory API)
The situation has actually got worse over time. In real terms, GDP per capita has fallen since the 1970s (see Figure 3). Much of this can be attributed to ongoing political instability in the region. Between 1997 and 2003, the DRC faced a bloody civil war, with an estimated 6 million casualties from fighting, disease, and malnutrition, as well as the near collapse of the country’s economy. Congolese internal tension is itself partly a legacy of the country’s brutal colonial exploitation at the hands of King Leopold II of Belgium. Historians estimate that up to 10 million Congolese people died as a direct result of the Belgian occupation between 1908 and 1960.
The country is still struggling today. To compare what life is like in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), policymakers often turn to measures such as the Human Development Index (HDI) or the Human Capital Index (HCI). The latter metric “quantifies the contribution of health and education to the productivity of the next generation of workers” (World Bank, 2024). In HCI terms the DRC ranks 164th out of 174 countries, with an index score of just 0.37 (see Figure 4). This means that “a Congolese child born today can expect to achieve only 37% of their potential” compared with what would have been possible with optimal schools and healthcare services (World Bank, 2024). The wider sub-Saharan African (SSA) region has an average HCI score of 0.4. So, with respect to human capital performance the DRC is the one of the poorest of the poor. Similarly, life expectancy in the DRC is just 57 years old – 16 years below the global average, and 22 years below the United States.
Figure 4: HCI index scores (2020)
Source: World Bank
Sleeping giant
Despite this bleak outlook, the DRC has plenty of economic potential. The Congo Basin is rich in natural resources, holding vast deposits of some of the world’s most valuable commodities, including diamonds, gold and coltan (a vital input for mobile phones and computers). Logging can also contribute to economic growth, if managed carefully. Over the border in the Republic of the Congo, for example, timber exports were worth $260 million, according to the latest data from the World Bank.
The DRC’s coltan deposits provide a neat microcosm for the thorny challenge facing policymakers today. On the one hand, with an estimated 3.5 million tonnes of cobalt reserves, the DRC could be at the forefront of the global net zero transition. Coltan is a vital input for electric vehicle batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. Not only could extracting the metallic ore help countries around the world to decarbonise, but it could also be an effective way to lift millions of Congolese people out of poverty. According to research by European Union, the DRC is sitting on $24 trillion worth of untapped mineral reserves (GSB Hub, 2024). This is eight times the current GDP of the United Kingdom.
But on the other hand, clearing land for drilling would mean the further the destruction of the Congo Basin and its tropical rainforest. This is not something the choking planet can withstand. Wiping out the world’s last great carbon sink in the name of net zero is a jarring incongruity.
Similarly, the Congo River is itself an untapped source of both energy and wealth. Harnessing the river’s power is another way that the Congolese government could drag millions of people out of poverty. The Grand Inga Dam project is a group of seven proposed hydroelectric power stations set to be built at the Inga Falls in the DRC. The project would generate around 40 gigawatts of renewable energy – more than double the power generated by the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei, China (currently the world’s largest hydroelectric facility). Advocates of the Grand Inga Dam claim that it will improve Africa’s energy security, create jobs and raise household incomes.
But critics point to previous attempts to harness the power of the Congo River. According to a report by the BBC, the first generation of Inga dams (built the 1970s and 1980s) fell into disrepair after the Congolese government failed to pay the energy company in charge of the project. Just ten years after they were built, “both dams were dilapidated due to a lack of funding” (BBC, 2013).
Like with its cobalt reserves, the proposed Grand Inga Dam project represents a difficult policy tension. Large-scale renewable energy generation is critical in the fight against climate change, and the dam could bring major economic benefits to the DRC, the Congo Basin region and Africa as a whole. But its construction could also cause substantial ecological and environmental damage. As part of the project, the Bundi valley will need to be flooded with water and turned into a vast reservoir, potentially displacing up to 30,000 people and wiping out entire habitats. Reconciling the trade-off between the need for green energy and the preservation of the natural world is an issue felt acutely in the Congo Basin. Squaring this particular circle is of paramount importance.
The road ahead
The Congo Basin is a precious source of biodiversity and one of our planet’s last functional carbon sinks. Protecting this critical frontier must remain a top priority for policymakers in the region and further afield. But this must be balanced against the needs of some of the poorest people in the world. For families living below the extreme poverty line in countries like the DRC, industries such as timber and coltan mining represent a window of economic hope. Lifting people out of poverty, while protecting the natural world, is a daunting but unavoidable challenge.
With careful policy design, the situation need not be completely binary. If projects like the Grand Inga Dam are managed effectively, with environmental and ecological concerns properly considered, the DRC could become a global leader in renewable energy, acting as a ‘green engine room’ for sub-Saharan Africa. Not only would this create wealth, but it would also reduce the need for fossil fuel extraction in the surrounding area. Similarly, extracting coltan in a way that is sustainable and does not encroach too heavily on the Congo rainforest could generate substantial economic activity, while also providing a critical ingredient for the worldwide push for net zero.
On a wider level, if policymakers can ‘weave in’ the value of biodiversity into economic decision-making, as advocated for in the 2021 Dasgupta Review, places like the Congo Basin may have a more hopeful future. As Professor Dasgupta concludes in his report, truly sustainable economic growth means “rebalancing our demand of Nature’s goods and services with its capacity to supply them”. From the timber held in the Congo Basin’s trees, to the minerals nested beneath the forest floor, to the awesome potential energy carried by river’s thousand-mile journey, balancing our growing demands of the natural world with what it can sustainably supply is vital. It is not just future of this rainforest on the line – it is all our futures.
Author: Charlie Meyrick
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