Climate Action: Why you should be concerned about the Congo Basin

The Congo Basin is the largest forest in Africa and a significantly important carbon storage in the world.

With more than 10,000 plant species in and around the forest, the Basin is referred to as the “green lungs of Africa” – the ecological respiratory organ for the planet.

 

The rainforest of the Congo basin spans over six countries – Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of the Congo – providing food, freshwater, medicine, security and an essential lifeline for local populations and serves as a critical habitat for endangered species.

 

But most critically, preserving the rich ecosystem of the Congo Basin is essential in the global efforts to tackle the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss.

 

The soils and plants of the Congo Basin rainforest store incredible amounts of carbon, preventing it from being emitted into the atmosphere and fueling climate change.

 

Carbon sinks are natural areas such as oceans and forests, which absorb carbon dioxide (Co2) from the atmosphere, helping to curb global warming.

 

The Congo Basin, with its dense tropical peatlands, is estimated to pull around 4% of global Co2 emissions out of the atmosphere each year.

 

 

Threat of land grabbing and industrial agriculture

 

Central Africa's rainforest stood at 178 million hectares in 2005.

 

The African region has lost 65 per cent of its productive land over the last 70 years, whereas the population has grown at least sixfold over the same period.

 

The Congo Basin is increasingly coming under threat due to deforestation, environmental degradation, growing populations, and the impact of climate change.

 

Several international fossil fuel and industrial-scale agriculture developers, mostly in rubber and oil palm plantations and, fueling wide-scale deforestation.

 

The move for land grabbing to exploit Africa’s resources for export has put the Congo Basin under threat. Illegal timber cut in the Basin is exported to the EU, US and China.

 

Unsustainable and illegal logging in the Congo Basin forest is leading to deforestation, destruction of wildlife habitat, diminished resilience to climate change.

 

Forest loss in the Congo Basin increased by 5% in 2021. The Democratic Republic of Congo alone lost nearly 500,000 hectares of primary forest in 2021.

 

The increased loss of biodiversity and threatened species will undermine efforts to protect biodiversity, and of the need to take urgent action to preserve ecosystem services vital to human well-being, including crop pollination, water purification, food security, clean air, flood protection and carbon sequestration.

 

Of the hundreds of mammal species discovered in the Congo Basin so far — including forest elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, and okapis — 39 are found nowhere else on Earth. Of its estimated 10,000 plant species, 3,300 are also unique to the region.

 

Conserving the Basin as climate action

 

The United Nations Environment Assembly recognizes that the Congo Basin peatlands contain a high proportion of organic carbon, making them one of the world's largest carbon sinks, contributing to the mitigation of global climate change.

 

This is in “considering the benefits and values of Congo Basin peatlands, which sequester more than 31 billion tonnes of carbon and provide vital ecosystem functions and services that reduce the magnitude and mitigate the impact of floods and droughts, preserve biodiversity and provide food and water supplies,” emphasized the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN).

 

At the recent AMCEN meeting in Addis Ababa, the African Group of Negotiators was urged to continue working with the COP 28 parties and the presidency to reach further decisions that recognize the special needs and circumstances of Africa and “to intensify regional and international collaboration to promote a multi-stakeholder approach to the conservation and sustainable management of peatlands in the Congo Basin, in line with Brazzaville 2018 declaration; adopted at the third meeting of Global Peatlands Initiative partners”.

 

The leaders also welcomed the initiative of the Republic of Congo to organize the Summit "Amazon - Borneo - Mekong and Southeast Asia - Congo, Summit of the Three Basins of Ecosystems of Biodiversity and Tropical Forests (S3B EBFT)".

 

This is in order to constitute, through the union of the three basins, a global alliance, biodiversity ecosystems and tropical forests, an Alliance/Coalition with a South-South governance, structuring the three global ecosystems that represent 80% of tropical forests around the world, bringing together 2/3 of terrestrial biodiversity and ensuring the vital role of global regulator of carbon balance and life on earth.

 

The three basins are expected to capture 80% of the existing and future financial mobilization announced at COP 27 for climate and COP 15 for biodiversity.

 

By Kofi Adu Domfeh 

 

Impacts of climate change are worsening, media identified as ally in public sensitization

The impacts of climate change are worsening as a result of human actions and activities, including indiscriminate felling of trees, water pollution through improper waste disposal, and unsustainable land management.

Educating the public on the dangers of these practices and the need to adopt environmentally sustainable practices are necessary to foster behavioral change and reduce impacts.

The Feed the Future (FTF) Ghana Policy LINK Activity considers the media as an important ally in educating and sensitizing the public on climate change, a phenomenon that threatens livelihoods and economic development.

In partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a capacity enhancement training on climate change and environmental issues was organized for reporters and editors in Ghana.

Dr. Gerald Forkuor, Climate Change Lead at Policy LINK, entreated journalists to project indigenous innovations and initiatives that promote climate-smart agriculture.

“The media as key actors for education and sensitization need to increase awareness on climate change issues through accurate reportage, especially in the deployment of technologies by farmers to support their resilience against climate change,” he said.

The media engagement highlighted knowledge of key climate change policies, strategies, and plans on themes such as climate smart agriculture, climate finance, biodiversity, and sustainable land and forest management.

Value of Biodiversity to Agriculture

Dr. Winston Asante, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), emphasized the value of biodiversity and its contribution to the food and agriculture sector is increasingly being acknowledged in international policy agenda.

“The loss of biodiversity leads to reduced sources of food, structural materials, medicinal and genetic resources,” he observed.

Supplying safe and nutritious food for a growing population poses a number of challenges, especially in increasing food production without jeopardizing the ability of the seas and lands to provide for other essential ecosystem functions and to supply food for future generations.

Biodiversity – the variety of life at genetic, species and ecosystem levels – has been described as vital to efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.

Dr. Asante spoke about the significant correlation between cocoa yield and water, noting that rainfall is the biggest singular factor influencing distribution of cocoa in Ghana.

“Water and temperature stress in cocoa farms will ultimately trigger and further drive challenges in managing agronomic and other on-farm complexities,” he stated.

Human-induced Degradation  

Due to the effects of management techniques and changes in land use brought on by food and agriculture, food systems are often being undermined.

According to Dr. Kwabena Asubonteng of the Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, University for Development Studies, population growth, agriculture expansion and deforestation are top drivers of human-induced land degradation.

Activities such as indiscriminate logging, forest burning and unsustainable mining are stresses and land and forests that exacerbate climate change.

Dr. Asubonteng called for the enforcement of laws and policies that restrict certain human activities to help reduce the spate of land degradation.

He also emphasized land restoration as “the process of avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation to recover the biodiversity and ecosystem services that sustain all life on earth”.

Climate change policy implementation

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in its annual report: “The State of the Global Climate 2022” has highlighted that the relentless advance of climate change brought more drought, flooding and heatwaves to communities in 2022, compounding threats to people’s lives and livelihoods.

Dr. Daniel Tutu Benefor of Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency and Focal Person to the UNFCCC says the country is on the path to implementing clear-up climate change policies as a vehicle to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The country is exploring opportunities to tap into climate and carbon financing frameworks for its climate mitigation and adaptation programmes.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

 

FAO report says food waste harms climate, water, land and biodiversity

The waste of a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking significant harm on the natural resources that humanity relies upon to feed itself, says a new report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

‘Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources’ is the first study to analyze the impacts of global food wastage from an environmental perspective, looking specifically at its consequences for the climate, water and land use, and biodiversity.

Each year, food that is produced but not eaten guzzles up a large volume of water and is responsible for adding 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases to the planet’s atmosphere.

In addition to its environmental impacts, the direct economic consequences to producers of food wastage – excluding fish and seafood – run to the tune of $750 billion annually, FAO’s report estimates.

“We all – farmers and fishers; food processers and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers -- must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can’t,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

“In addition to the environmental imperative, there is a moral one: We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste, when 870 million people go hungry every day,” he added.

As a companion to its new study, FAO has also published “tool-kit” that contains recommendations on how food loss and waste can be reduced at every stage of the food chain.

The tool-kit profiles a number of projects around the world that show how national and local governments, farmers, businesses, and individual consumers can take steps to tackle the problem.

Achim Steiner, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, said "UNEP and FAO have identified food waste and loss--food wastage--as a major opportunity for economies everywhere to assist in a transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient and inclusive Green Economy”.

According to him, the report by the FAO underlines the multiple benefits that can be realized – in many cases through simple and thoughtful measures by households, retailers, restaurants, schools and businesses – that can contribute to environmental sustainability, economic improvements, food security and the realization of the UN Secretary General's Zero Hunger Challenge.

 

Food loss is the unintended reduction in food available for human consumption that results from inefficiencies in supply chains: poor infrastructure and logistics, lack of technology, insufficient skills, knowledge and management capacity.

It mainly occurs at production- postharvest and processing stages, for example when food goes unharvested or is damaged during processing, storage and transport and disposed of.

Food waste refers to intentional discards of edible items, mainly by retailers and consumers, and is due to the behavior of businesses and individuals.

UNEP and FAO are founding partners of the Think Eat Save--Reduce Your Foodprint campaign that was launched earlier in the year and whose aim is to assist in coordinating world-wide efforts to manage down wastage.