The Congo Basin and its forest ecosystems
The forest ecosystems of the Congo basin span across much of Central Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf of Guinea to the mountains of the Albertine Rift in the east. With over 180 million hectares they constitute the second largest area of contiguous moist tropical forest left in the world and represent approximately one fifth of the world's remaining closed canopy tropical forest.
The Congo basin forests do not only play a critical role for global biodiversity conservation (they are home to three of the world's four species of great apes), they also provide vital regional and global ecological services as carbon sink and catchment basin.
Even though much of the forest areas currenty remain intact, the regional forest ecosystems continue to be at risk from a complex set of important threats - such as unsustainable timer and mineral extraction, bush meat trade and weak governance - that call for concerted global action.
In this context, we want to cite a prime example of CBFP's collaboration efforts: "The Congo Basin Forests 2006" is the first comprehensive report on the state of the Congo basin forests, published in collaboration with COMIFAC.
State of the Congo Basin Forests 2006
As stated in the preface of the report, little objective information on the condition and extent of this vast natural resouce which are the Congo Basin forest ecosystems, was available to decision-makers and stakeholders, making a concerted international plan of action, in the framework of the CBFP, difficult to establish.
Furthermore, while it was generally considered that the forest is being rapidly regraded and biodiversity lost, there has not been a widely available system to help interested stakeholders understand the seriousness and origin of the threats and the impacts, both positive and negative, of human acitivties on the forest. This kind of information is of vital necessity for CBFP's partners to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts and to prioritize actions for efficient use of scarce conservation resources.
The 2006 State of Forests aims to present the "base-line"state, a starting point from which subsequent reports can be compared. As such it is a working document that serves as both a monitoring tool and a coordination instrument for the CBFP.
Download State of the Forests 2006
(Due to the large file size of the document - 11MB- please save the document to your local computer to view)