Covering an area larger than Western Europe, across six countries, the Congo Basin constitutes the second largest rainforest in the world and the Earth’s most effective single carbon sink: its annual net-carbon dioxide absorption is six times that of the Amazon rainforest. These forests and peatlands are critical to tackling the global climate crisis as they naturally absorb 4% of global emissions every year – over double the UK’s annual output.
The Congo Basin forests are also vital for African growth and stability, with an estimated 40 million people living within them, and 80 million people directly reliant on them for food, health, and livelihood needs. These forests provide significant amounts of rainfall to nations across the entire continent, including most of the rainfall across Central Africa.
However, this vital resource is being destroyed at an alarming pace. On current trends approximately a quarter of undisturbed forest present in 2020 will disappear by 2050 – an area the size of France. Unlike the commercially driven deforestation of the Amazon and Southeast Asia, this destruction is driven overwhelmingly by poverty, and there are linkages too with the conflict in eastern DRC, illegal mining and informal trade.
The Congo Basin Pledge that was developed at COP26 in 2021 committed to mobilise $1.5 billion for Congo Basin countries to preserve their forests. As that Pledge nears its end, attention is now turning to how to ensure the region continues to benefit from international climate finance in a more uncertain regional and global geopolitical context.
This high-level roundtable retreat will provide a discreet environment for constructive discussions among a range of decision-makers and other experts, towards agreeing a process to deliver a successor to the Pledge at COP30.
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