The Congo Basin is currently the largest and healthiest tropical forest carbon sink in the world, sequestering 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually with a peat swamp that stores 29 billion tonnes of carbon – equivalent to about three years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Congo Basin faces myriad and growing threats, including monocrop plantations, industrial meat farming, deforestation and the impacts of the climate crisis like the spread of drought and disease. In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the forest is also threatened by war.
A new model of green economic development, conservation and peacebuilding in eastern DRC is protecting the forest while sustainably harnessing natural resources to benefit local communities.
The Democratic Republic of Congo government and partners are announcing the Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor in Davos, which will scale up this model to cover an area the size of France.
This forms the world’s largest protected forest area and consists of a network of economic hubs built on sustainable agricultural production and powered by renewable energy derived from the hydropower potential of the Congo River.
The initiative aims to create 500,000 new jobs and transfer a million tonnes of food annually from the Kivus to Kinshasa, Africa’s largest city.
Source: WE Forum
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/congo-kivu-kinshasa-green-corridor/