The world has a decade to save the biggest tropical carbon sink

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🗞️ Driving the news: A landmark 800-page scientific assessment on the Congo Basin, Earth’s largest tropical carbon sink, warns that the world has about a decade to prevent irreversible damage that could flip the region from a massive CO₂ absorber into a net emitter

🔭 The context: The Congo Basin absorbs 600 million tonnes of CO₂ per year (equal to Germany’s annual emissions)
• But pressures from slash-and-burn agriculture, logging, charcoal production, and rapid population growth are accelerating forest loss
• In some areas of the Amazon — once a parallel sink — deforestation has already pushed ecosystems past a tipping point and turned them into sources of emissions. Scientists fear the Congo Basin could follow

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: Losing the Congo Basin would mean losing:

• Earth’s most important tropical carbon sink, crucial for stabilising global temperatures
• A continental rainfall engine: ~70% of local rainfall recycles into the broader African climate system
• A natural regulator that supports agriculture and water security for hundreds of millions across East, West, Central and North Africa

• If degradation continues unchecked, global climate targets become dramatically harder — if not impossible — to meet.

⏭️ What’s next: Scientists call for:

• Sustainable agriculture reforms to replace slash-and-burn practices
• Stronger governance and anti-deforestation enforcement
• Major increases in climate finance
• Rapid expansion of carbon and biodiversity credit markets, including support from Brazil’s new Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which has secured US$5 billion in pledges ahead of COP30

• The Democratic Republic of Congo — home to vast stretches of forest and severe economic pressures — stands to benefit the most if financing mechanisms scale

💬 One quote: “If we don’t get a handle on it in the next decade, it will be out of control.” — Dr Lee White, former Gabon environment minister

📈 One stat: The Congo Basin once stored 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon — nearly equal to the full annual emissions of the United States

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