FROM GLOBAL OUTLOOK TO REGIONAL RESPONSE – THE CONGO BASIN IN 5 NUMBERS AND 5 MOVES
“From Global Outlook to Regional Response: Advancing the Congo Basin Forest Agenda” is a joint evidence paper by Rainforest Foundation Norway (RfN) and the Central African Forest Initiative, extending RFN’s Tropical Deforestation Outlook to the Congo Basin.
Mha
tree cover lost in 2025: 6% below 2024, but 2% above the five-year average
%
permanent deforestation against 2010–2015 (0.87 to 0.41 Mha/yr, JRC definition)
Gigaton
gross CO₂e emitted per year from forest loss: flat for a decade
%
of Basin loss and 79% of emissions occur in the DRC
Gigaton
of carbon in the Cuvette Centrale peatlands: the DRC’s 2025 oil blocks cover almost all of its share
The Headline : Stability Without Transformation
Forest loss eased 6% in 2025, but this is a return from an exceptional fire year, not a structural break: total loss still sits 2% above the five-year average. The improvement is also modest against a much sharper global correction. Worldwide, tropical primary-forest loss fell 36% in 2025 as the extreme 2024 fire season subsided; in the Congo Basin it fell 5 to 6%, and in the DRC non-fire loss reached a record high. Permanent deforestation has more than halved on the stricter JRC definition, yet degradation now exceeds deforestation (0.67 against 0.41 Mha a year, 2021–2025) and gross emissions have not fallen materially in ten years. Current policies prevent rapid deterioration; they do not yet put the Basin on a credible 2030 pathway.
The Congo Basin is the last of the three great tropical forest regions that still functions as a strong carbon sink. New data for 2016–2025, computed across three independent datasets, show a region that has contained forest loss without transforming its drivers, just as a new wave of mining, energy and infrastructure investment moves towards final investment decisions
One Region, 3 Very Different Situations
| DRC | Cameroon | Rep. of Congo | Gabon | CAR | Eq. Guinea | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 vs 2024 | -7% | +15% | -38% | -25% | +22% | -35% |
| vs 2020-24 avg | -1% | +14% | -3% | -8% | +28% | -34% |
Change in annual tree-cover loss by country. Warm = loss increased; teal = loss decreased. GFW/Hansen, 30% canopy threshold
Volume – DRC
The centre of gravity: 1.29 Mha lost in 2025, 77% of the regional total. Even modest gains here outweigh large ones anywhere else. Instruments exist at scale: results-based partnerships, payments for environmental services, land-use reform
Frontiers – Cameroon and Central African Republic
Where the trend is moving fastest.
Cameroon lost 206 kha, 15% above 2024, and its primary-forest loss of 105 kha is a national record. CAR has the steepest trajectory in the Basin: loss up 22%, 28% above its five-year average, emissions up 32%. Permanent agriculture already leads in CAR (49%) and is surging in Cameroon (38%); early action can still prevent entrenchment.
Permanence – Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo
Low loss, high carbon, rising exposure to oil, corridors and mining. The task is to make continued stewardship investable: standing-forest finance with a meaningful, transparent share reaching Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
The Drivers Are Shifting
Three-quarters of loss still comes from smallholder farming and wood energy; the response must centre on rural transformation, land-use planning and tenure. But the fastest-growing pressures are different in kind.
Wildfire has produced its two worst years on record, 100 kha in 2024 and 67 kha in 2025 against a 2020–2023 average of 21kha, as the Basin measurably dries: an emerging climate-fire feedback. Mining-driven loss roughly doubled in 2025, to its highest recorded share of Basin loss at 2.4%, and the footprint that matters is the indirect one. Across sub-Saharan Africa, each hectare cleared directly for mining is estimated to trigger about 34 hectares of further forest loss within five years, through the roads, settlement and farming that follow.
The Finance Window
The architecture is shifting. The Belém Call and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility could, for the first time, pay for standing forest rather than for reduced loss, alongside resultsbased partnerships that pay for verified reductions. Access is not automatic: it depends on eligibility, credible national measurement, robust and nationally endorsed delivery systems, and evidence that finance reaches landscapes, communities and households. Today less than a fifth of the finance intended for Indigenous Peoples and local communities reaches them. Safeguards negotiated after financing is signed are weaker and costlier; the window to embed them is now.
Five priorities to 2030
- Secure the Basin’s centre of gravity. Donors and results-based partners concentrate on the DRC: partnerships anchored in verified results, payments for environmental services at scale, land-use reform, and interventions that change the economics of charcoal and agricultural expansion.
- Prevent the next frontiers from consolidating. Donors and supply-chain actors concentrate early-warning and agricultural support on Cameroon and the Central African Republic, before conversion becomes permanent and commodity-driven.
- Make permanence investable. Finance providers position Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of the Congo to access standing-forest finance, with a meaningful and transparent share reaching Indigenous Peoples and local
communities through a robust benefit-sharing instrument such as the CAFI PES Management tool. - Set the red lines before investment decisions are locked in. Financiers make corridor-level assessment a condition of mining, oil and infrastructure lending. Governments may wish to consider restricted-area status for peatlands and intact forests, and free, prior and informed consent as a standing requirement.
- Move from monitoring change to managing risk. Governments and partners treat degradation and fire as first-order metrics, connect alerts to funded response chains, and use verified outcomes to steer finance where avoided loss delivers most.
Investment Decisions Are being Locked In
Oil and gas
The DRC’s 2025 licensing round: 52 blocks over 1.24 million km². Independent mapping (Earth Insight 2025) puts them over almost the entire DRC part of the Cuvette Centrale peatlands and 72% of the Kivu–Kinshasa Green Corridor, the DRC’s own initiative.
Mining
Nearly 100,000 km² of mining titles overlap forest in the DRC, and mining-driven loss there has risen nearly sevenfold since 2016, from 3.4 kha to 22.7 kha.
Corridors
Some 60,000 km of new roads across the Basin by 2030 under business as usual, implying about 0.6 Mha of additional forest loss on the Outlook’s own conservative assumption.
An invitation to contribute
RFN and CAFI invite governments, donors, companies and civil society to share how these findings could inform your institution’s action, and the actions you envisage to protect the Congo Basin, building in particular on Section 7 of the report, “From evidence to action”. Write to the CAFI Secretariat at secretariatcafi@gmail.com
References
- Hansen et al. 2013 / Global Forest Watch 2026 (tree-cover and primary-forest loss, 30% threshold)
- JRC Tropical Moist Forest (Vancutsem et al. 2021)
- CAFI–FAO sample-based estimates 2015–2023
- WRI/Google DeepMind driver attribution v1.3 (Sims et al. 2025)
- Harris et al. 2021 (emissions)
- WRI 2026 (2025 global loss update)
- Morton et al. 2026 (indirect mining footprint)
- Earth Insight 2025 (oil-block overlays)
- Kuepper et al. 2025 (Tropical Deforestation Outlook)
- Crezee et al. 2022 (peat)
- RFN 2024 (finance reaching communities)
All figures as computed for the companion paper
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