The Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River in Central Africa, containing the continent’s largest tropical rainforest and serving as a critical carbon sink for the global climate system.
Spanning 300 million hectares, the Congo Basin rainforest is second in size only to the Amazon. Its vast forests store enormous quantities of carbon and help regulate regional and global climate patterns, though deforestation and climate-driven shifts in precipitation threaten both the ecosystem and the economic activity that depends on it. The basin supplies water for agriculture and energy generation across west equatorial Africa. Eight sites within the Congo Basin are inscribed on the World Heritage List, five of them—all in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—currently on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Despite its global importance, only 14 per cent of the humid forest holds protected status, leaving much of this biodiverse landscape vulnerable to development pressures and environmental change.
