Plans are underway to boost scientific research into the Congo Basin, the second largest rainforest and the most efficient carbon sink in the world, to the same level as the Amazon, a webinar heard Thursday.
The One Forest Summit, co-hosted by the presidents of Gabon and France in the African country at the start of March, plans to kickstart a wave of research into the basin’s critical biodiversity and the maintenance of its essential role in climate regulation.
“Between 2008 and 2017, central Africa got 11.5% of the international flows of finance for forest protection, compared to 34% of the Amazon and 55% going to Southeast Asia”, noted Simon Lewis, professor of global change science at the UK’s University of Leeds and University College London.
The summit will start preparations for establishing a Science Panel for the Congo Basin that plans to emulate the Amazon’s science panel composed of over 240 scientists.
The Congo Basin spans six countries—Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon – and has close to 300 million people living in the region.
There are approximately 10,000 plant species in the Congo Basin and 30% are unique to the region, according to green group WWF.
Endangered wildlife – including forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas inhabit the lush forests – while 400 other species of mammals, 1,000 species of birds, and 700 species of fish can also be found there.
“We currently see around half a million hectares of deforestation in the Congo Basin a year,” Lewis added, speaking at the Congo Basin Forest Webinar.
“Each hectare, each hundred metre by hundred metre patch of forest is removing around two-and-a-half tonnes of carbon dioxide every single year.”
“If you compare that to the Amazon or Southeast Asia or a boreal forest in Russia or a temperate forest in Europe, that’s more carbon per unit area than anywhere else in the world.”
The Congo Basin is also home to the world’s largest tropical peatland, around the size of England and Wales combined, which stores around 29 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to global energy-related CO2 emissions for a year.
Emma Torres, strategic coordinator of the Science Panel for the Amazon, said the science panel for the Congo Basin plans to issue its first report by December’s COP28 UN climate negotiations in Dubai.
“The expectations are to mobilise massive funding to conserve this important forest and align with the aspirations of COP27 … and the agreements that countries have made to contribute to conserve forests around the world,” she said.
Gabon has been keen to sell carbon credits from its forestry conservation as carbon credits under the REDD.plus platform hosted by the 50-plus Coalition for Rainforest Nations’ (CfRN).
Last year, the UNFCCC’s Lima Hub showed Gabon’s 2010-2018 forestry activity, listing REDD results of some 187 million tonnes of CO2e in saved emissions, which, set against a forest reference level of 96 Mt, produces a combined result of 90.6 Mt.
But the nation’s credits are yet to be listed on the platform, which has faced criticism about the rigour of its methodology.
However, Simon Lewis said the jurisdictional approach to forest protection adopted by Gabon would address concerns of additionality and leakage when compared to project-based REDD+ approaches.
“This is the way it’s going to go and should go, that we will go to whole states, whole country, saying that we will reduce deforestation and we have the levers to do so because we are the government of this territory and sell credits on that basis,” Lewis said.
By Paddy Gourlay – paddy@carbon-pulse.com
