Vast Tropical Forest Carbon Stocks: Salonga alone (3.6 Mha of intact rainforest) contains immense above-ground biomass. As noted by UNESCO, this park plays a critical role in carbon sequestrationwhc.unesco.org. Similar dense forest cover in the Okapi Reserve, Itombwe, and lowland Kahuzi-Biega means these areas store on the order of hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon in tree biomass. For example, the Congo Basin rainforests have very high carbon density – each hectare can hold 100–200+ tonnes of carbon in living trees. Protecting millions of hectares in this project could safeguard billions of tonnes of CO₂-equivalent stored in vegetation.

Soil and Peat Carbon: Several project sites include peatlands or carbon-rich soils. The Cuvette Centrale swamps of the central Congo Basin, some of which lie in or around Salonga and its landscape, contain an estimated 30 billion tonnes of carbon in peattheguardian.comtheguardian.com. While not all peatlands are inside park boundaries, Salonga’s marshes and the Ituri basin in Okapi Reserve have deep organic soils. Keeping these areas intact prevents the massive CO₂ emissions that would occur if peatlands are drained or burnedtheguardian.com. In fact, the Congo Basin peatlands store as much carbon below ground (≈30 Gt) as all the above-ground carbon in the entire Congo Basin’s foreststheguardian.com. This highlights the critical climate value of conserving wetlands within our project areas.

Woodland and Savanna Carbon: Upemba, Kundelungu, and Garamba, while dominated by savanna and open woodland, still contribute to carbon storage. Their woodlands and gallery forests sequester carbon in woody biomass and soil. Additionally, avoiding fires and degradation in these savannas can prevent CO₂ emissions. Though per-hectare carbon stocks are lower than in rainforests, the extensive area (3+ Mha combined) means their protection adds a significant climate benefit.

Combined Carbon Sink: In total, the seven protected areas likely hold several billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent when considering above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, and soil carbon. To illustrate the magnitude, the DRC’s forests as a whole are estimated to store ~34.4 Gt of carbon (including 20.2 Gt in above-ground biomass and 9.1 Gt in soil)globalforestwatch.org. Our project covers a substantial portion of the most carbon-rich landscapes in DRC. Conserving this 9.36 Mha block could avoid emissions on the order of tens of millions of tonnes of CO₂ per year over the next several decades, by preventing deforestation and ecosystem degradation.

Avoided Emissions Baseline: The DRC has one of the highest deforestation rates in the tropics due to agriculture, logging, mining, and conflicts. From 2001–2022, DRC lost ~18.4 million ha of tree cover, equivalent to 11.4 Gt CO₂e emissions (averaging ~517 Mt CO₂e per year)interactive.carbonbrief.org. These protected areas, while officially off-limits to deforestation, have faced encroachment pressures in the past (e.g. artisanal mining in Okapi and Kahuzi-Biegawhc.unesco.orgwhc.unesco.org, slash-and-burn farming around Itombwe and Kahuzi-Biega, bushfires in savannas, and poaching-driven habitat damage in Garamba). In a business-as-usual scenario without strong management, one could assume a deforestation risk of roughly 0.5% of area per year across these landscapes (several tens of thousands of hectares annually), especially on the forest edges. That corresponds to many millions of tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year that this project aims to avoid by enforcing protection. By maintaining or improving protection, the forests will continue to grow and sequester carbon, while prevented deforestation keeps vast carbon stores locked up in biomass and peat