The rainforest the world forgot: the Congo basin is the second largest on Earth, so why is it being neglected? It is one of the world’s most vital carbon sinks, but this tropical rainforest is losing out when it comes to climate policy and funding Guardian Tam Patachako 18 Nov 2025 In October 2023, leaders, scientists and policymakers from three of the world’s great rainforest regions – the Amazon, the Congo, and the Borneo-Mekong basins – assembled in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. They were there to discuss one urgent question: how to save the planet’s last great tropical forests from accelerating destruction.For those present, the question was existential. But to their dismay, almost no one noticed. “There was very little acknowledgment that this was happening, outside of the Congo basin region,” says Prof Simon Lewis, a lecturer at the University of Leeds and University College London, and co-chair of the Congo Basin Science Initiative (CBSI). “It didn’t really fly as a conference or a set of policy proposals to better invest in that region of the world.” The people of the Congo basin have tightened their belts so that the world can breathe – and we receive no compensation Arlette Soudan-Nonault.
Despite being the second-largest rainforest on Earth – and one of the most vital carbon sinks – the Congo basin remains the rainforest the world forgot, often overlooked when it comes to global climate policy and funding. Spanning six countries across central Africa and home to roughly 130 million people, the basin is often called the “lungs of Africa”. Its vast canopy shelters thousands of rare species. “It has about 10,000 plant species and 30% of these can only be found in the region,” says Dr Yadvinder Malhi, a leading ecologist at Oxford University. Unlike the Amazon, the Congo’s forests remain largely intact – home to endangered animals such as forest elephants, okapis, mountain gorillas and bonobos. Its significance extends far beyond its borders. The basin’s rainfall feeds main river systems across the continent, sustaining life as far away as the Sahel. “Africa is largely an arid continent,” says Malhi. “This fountain of water in the heart of the continent circulates and [also] ends up feeding into the Nile. That sustains even more lives for millions of people.” Crucially, while encroachments of logging and mining are increasing, much of the forest remains untouched. As a result, the Congo basin is believed to be the last big rainforest to remain a strong carbon sink – with enough trees left to absorb more carbon than it emits.
In a report released on Monday, as the Cop30 climate conference began in Belém, the Science Panel for the Congo Basin found that the Congo basin absorbs 600m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, but this number is falling due to accelerating deforestation. Prof Bonaventure Sonké, co-chair of the panel, said the researchers hoped it would bring international attention and support for “the Earth’s most important but least-studied tropical rain forest”.
While scientists agree on the Congo basin’s critical importance, it continues to be funded at a far lower rate than its counterparts. A report published earlier this year by the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) revealed the scale of the financial imbalance. 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. Germany was the leading donor for central Africa during this period, providing 24% of total funding, followed by the Global Environment Fund (12%), the World Bank (9.4%), and the US (8.8%). Most of the money (30%) went towards biodiversity protection, with another 27% supporting environmental policy. Yet funding for scientific research accounted for just 0.1%.
“The basin countries don’t prioritise research,” says Dr Richard Sufo Kankeu, a scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF and one of the report’s authors. The result is a wide gap in scientific understanding. A 2023 study examining relative levels of climate and biodiversity research on different rainforests found about 2,000 published academic papers for the Congo basin, compared with 10,611 for the Amazon. “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.....read on https://www.theguardian.com/