The Congo Basin

The Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin of the Congo River, is located in Central Africa, in a region known as western equatorial Africa. The Congo Basin region is sometimes simply known as the Congo.

The basin begins in the highlands of the East African Rifte system with the entrance of the Chambeshi River, the Uele and Ubangi rivers on the upper course and the Lualaba River draining wetlands in the middle course. Due to the young age and active elevation of the East African rift on the promontories, the annual sediment load of the river is very large, but the drainage basin occupies large areas of low relief in much of its area.

The basin is a total of 3.7 million square kilometers and houses some of the largest undisturbed stretches of tropical rainforest on the planet, as well as large wetlands. The basin ends where the river empties its cargo in the Gulf of Guinea, in the Atlantic Ocean. The climate is tropical equatorial, with two rainy seasons, including very high rains and high temperatures throughout the year.

The basin houses the endangered western lowland gorilla. The basin was the watershed of the Congo River populated by Pygmy peoples, and eventually the Bantu people migrated there and founded the Kongo Kingdom. Belgium, France and Portugal later established colonial control over the whole region in the late nineteenth century.

The General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885 gave a precise definition to the "conventional basin" of the Congo, which included the entire royal basin and some other areas.

The Congo Basin Project

The Congo Basin initiative seeks to stimulate innovation and strengthen new social initiatives throughout the Basin Region. We therefore invite Your Excellencies to participate in our network of leaders chaired by President Sassou Nguesso and include initiatives from other organizations and non-profit civil society organizations, in line with its mission to contribute to supporting African development and integration by strengthening collaboration and funding of Congo Basin projects.

Partnerships in the context of globalization between the private public sector and the use of alliances between knowledge exchange of experiences and availability of resources to improve the relationship between regions.

Africa has an inexhaustible wealth of natural resources, its leaders agreed that social organizations and leading figures could innovate initiatives and mobilize the African Society and the Developed Countries in helping to raise the quality of life of communities, better management, use of the forest water and the natural capital of the Congo Basin Region with specific projects that can be differentiated in countries that adhere to the Initiative. In addition, all should play an important role in investing in civil society organizations with the aim of promoting and accessing other donors or participate in projects from the simplest to the complex.

The Congo Basin Initiative seeks to stimulate innovation and strengthen new social initiatives throughout the Basin Region, so we invite Your Excellencies to participate in our leadership network chaired by President Sassou Nguesso.

Small and medium-sized social organizations with an annual budget of less than 10,000 to 100 USD;
Participating groups or collectives, including those who did not participate in the Act of signature but who wish to capitalize on the initiative.

Proposals should be submitted during the period of 10 July for projects in the areas of education, culture, health, socioeconomic development, human rights, civic participation and social business.

The Congo Region

The Congo is a traditional name for the average equatorial Africa that lies between the Gulf of Guinea and the Great African Lakes. It contains some of the largest rainforests in the world. Countries wholly or partly in the Congo region:

Enviromental Importance

The Congo forest is an important biodiversity hotspot. It is home to the okapi, bonobo and peacock of the Congo, but is also an important source of African teak, used for the construction of furniture and floors.

It is estimated that 40 million people depend on these forests, surviving on traditional livelihoods. Globally, Congo's forests act as the second lung of the planet, counterpoint to the Amazon, which is rapidly declining.

They are an immense "carbon sink", imprisoning the carbon that could turn into carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. The Congo basin holds about 8% of the world's forest-based carbon. These forests also affect rainfall in the North Atlantic.

In other words, these remote forests are crucial to the future of climate stability, a bulwark against uncontrolled climate change.

A moratorium on wood exploration in the Congo forest was agreed with the World Bank and the Democratic Republic of Congo in May 2002. The World Bank agreed to provide $ 90 million in development aid for to DRC. The government has not issued new concessions granting rights to timber companies to exploit the forest. The agreement also prohibited the renewal of existing concessions.

Greenpeace asks the World Bank to "think outside the box" and use the forest's potential in the battle against climate change. If these forests are deforested, the carbon it captures will be released into the atmosphere. It says that 8% of the forest carbon on Earth is stored in the forests of the DRC.

Predictions for future unstoppable deforestation estimate that by 2050, activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo will release approximately the same amount of carbon dioxide the United Kingdom has emitted over the past 60 years.

The government has created a new forest code that requires companies to invest in local development and to follow a sustainable cycle of twenty-five years of rotating logging (wood exploration).

When a company receives a central government grant to enter the Congo, it must sign an agreement with the local chiefs and hereditary landowners, who give them permission to extract the trees in exchange for development packages. In theory, companies must pay the government nearly $18 million a year for these concessions, of which 40% in taxes paid must be returned to provincial governments for investment in the social development of the local population in the exploited areas.

In its current form, the Kyoto Protocol does not reward so-called "avoided deforestation" initiatives that protect the forest from being felled. But many climate scientists and policymakers hope that negotiations for the Kyoto successor will include such measures. If this were the case, there could be a financial incentive to protect the forests.

L'Île Mbiye in Kisangani is part of the Stellenbosch University Symposium on Sustainable Forest Management in Africa. The DRC is also seeking to expand the area of protected forest, for which it hopes to obtain compensation through emerging forest carbon markets.

The main Congolese environmental organization working to save forests is an NGO called OCEAN, which serves as a link between international equipment such as Greenpeace and local community groups in the concessions.