How much does it cost to protect the Congo Rainforest? The world's second-largest rainforest provides critical ecological services that millions of people and myriad species rely on. It is also a massive carbon sink, storing tens of billions of tons of carbon in its trees, soils and peatlands.

One would think protecting it would be an international priority, and yet funding commitments have historically struggled to adequately finance forest protection in the region. Experts say many commitments end before funding can be fully disbursed, and efforts rarely translate to a better life for local communities who live in these forests.

For episode five of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, we speak with experts who explain the challenges of financing forest protection in the region and what's needed to address gap: Paolo Cerutti, senior scientist and DRC unit head at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR-ICRAF); Chadrack Kafuti at Ghent University; Wahida Patwa Patwa-Shah, senior regional technical specialist, UNDP Climate Hub; and Lee White, minister of water, forests, the sea and environment in Gabon.

If you missed the first four episodes of this podcast series, please subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever you get your podcasts from, or click on the links below: 

A just energy transition requires better governance & equity in the DRC

Big potential and immense challenges for great ape conservation in the Congo Basin, experts say

Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in

Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point

Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: Rainforest in Gabon in the Congo Basin, which is home to chimpanzees. Natural forest has far greater biodiversity and carbon storage value than tree plantations. Photo credit: ZB / Mongabay.

Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts. If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

The global 'just energy transition' has increased demand for critical minerals – such as cobalt and copper – for products like lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, and other renewable energy sources.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which produces nearly 70% of the global supply of cobalt, has a poorly regulated mining sector that's fueled by demand for these natural resources and which has forced Indigenous communities off their land and otherwise done little to lift millions of Congolese citizens out of poverty. The DRC has now opened up land for oil and gas exploration, too, and experts are skeptical that oil will do much to improve people's lives, either.

Christian-Geraud Neema Byamungu, Francophone editor at the China Global South Project, and Joseph Itongwa Mukumo, an Indigenous community member of Walikale in the North Kivu province, and director of ANAPA-DRC, speak with Mongabay about what DRC residents need for a just energy transition, and the impacts mining has had on lives and the environment.

If you missed the first three episodes of this podcast series, please subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever you get your podcasts from, or click on the links below: 

Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point

Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in

Big potential and immense challenges for great ape conservation in the Congo Basin, experts say

Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: Cobalt, copper and malachite from a copper mine in the DRC. Image by Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) 

Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts. If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

Recent research shows that great apes of the Congo Basin stand to lose up to 94% of their habitat due to climate change. In the world's only habitat of bonobos and mountain gorillas, time (and land) is running out to save them. Hunting, natural resource extraction, disease, and other human impacts threaten their prospects. 

On this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast, we speak with Terese Hart, a researcher with the ICCN (the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature); Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, a wildlife veterinarian and founder of the NGO Conservation Through Public Health; Kirsty Graham, a researcher from the University of St Andrews; and Sally Coxe, co-founder and president from the Bonobo Conservation Initiative about the importance of great apes, the potential they have for the protection of the Congo rainforest, and the challenges that persist in protecting them.

If you missed the first two episodes of this podcast series, please subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever you get your podcasts from, or click on the links below: 

Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world’ is at a turning point

Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in

Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is a sanctuary for half of the world’s remaining population of endangered mountain gorillas, alongside forest elephants and many other species. Image by Brian Harries via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

The debate about how to best protect the Congo Basin's rainforest increasingly finds experts and Indigenous leaders arguing that it's time for a change, one that brings local and Indigenous people into the conversation.

Fortress conservation, a model exported to Africa during the colonial era, typically expels local people from land they once relied on for food, fiber and medicine, but experts argue the concept that this model uses – that of a 'pristine wilderness' untouched by humans – is a flawed construct. Many protected areas in Africa still use this conservation model, though, to the detriment of local people, sometimes resulting in violence. 

On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, we interview lawyer and Goldman Prize-winner Samuel Nguiffo, Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo, and conservation and Indigenous relations expert Vedaste Cituli about the legacy of fortress conservation in the Congo Basin, how the militarization of rangers has exacerbated tension with local people, and potential pathways forward to return some conservation control to local and Indigenous populations.

Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: The Indigenous Batwa were evicted from their forest home in Uganda in the early 1990s when Mgahinga Gorilla National Park was established, leaving them landless and poor in a society that saw them as a lower class. Image by USAID Biodiversity & Forestry via Flickr (Public Domain).

Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

The Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest rainforest, a staggering 178 million hectares: containing myriad wildlife and giant trees plus numerous human communities, it is also one of the world's biggest carbon sinks. 

On this first episode of a new season of Mongabay Explores, we take you to the Congo Basin and begin with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which contains 60% of central Africa's forest, but which also aims to open up protected areas and forested peatlands to oil and gas development. 

We speak with Adams Cassinga, a DRC resident and founder of Conserv Congo, and Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, about the environmental and conservation challenges faced by the DRC and the Congo Basin in general. 

Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: A girl carries fruit back to Konye village. As industrial agricultural techniques spread into forests of the Congo Basin, alternatives like agroforestry that can benefit farmers, consumers and natural resources are also on the rise. Image © Greenpeace / John Novis

Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Leif Cocks returns to the podcast to discuss the status of the Sumatran elephant, a critically endangered species that we discussed with him in season 2, which is estimated to have less than 10 years to find a conservation solution or face extinction: he says the ranks of passionate, young Indonesian conservationists he's recently met that are working for the iconic animals' future gives him great hope.  

He also shares an update on the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, whose land is threatened by a controversial hydroelectric project in North Sumatra, which has also claimed the lives of 16 workers in less than two years.

To hear our previous conversation with Leif, find episode 6 of season 2, or listen here:

Podcast: With just 10 years left to save Sumatran elephants, what can be done now?

To listen to our previous conversation with him about the Tapanuli orangutan, find episode 4 of season 2, or go here:

Podcast: Will a newly discovered ape species face a dammed future?

Related Reading:

• ‘Chased from every side’: Sumatran elephants pinned down by forest loss
• Photos: Meet the Indonesians on the front lines of human-elephant conflict in Sumatra
• ‘Cursed’ dam project in orangutan habitat claims 16th life in less than 2 years

If you missed the ten part series of Mongabay Explores Sumatra, you can find them via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. 

Episode Artwork: Sumatran elephants in Bukit Barisan National Park. Photo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Related Reading:

• It’s a girl: Super rare Sumatran rhino born in captive-breeding center

Episode Artwork: A new Sumatran rhino calf born in Way Kambas sanctuary. Image courtesy of Indonesia's Environment and Forestry Ministry.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! 

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for @mongabay.

Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.