The next carbon offset frontier is not Silicon Valley, it’s the Congo Basin

As the world gears up for COP26 in Glasgow, Douglas Flynn explains why Africa’s tropical forests must be a focus for protection through investment

(Tracy Angus-Hammond from Pixabay )

The Congo Basin is not known as a frontier of cutting-edge climate engineering. And yet it is where - hidden from the headlines and hyperbole of Silicon Valley - thousands of engineers are working on the most advanced carbon sequestration techniques on earth.

They are implementing a solution known in technical parlance as ‘Improved Forest Management’: altered planting and harvesting practices demonstrate increases in carbon sequestration and storage, and are therefore eligible for carbon offset finance. 

In central Africa it is a round-the-clock effort: thousands of individuals, working day and night, that collectively increase the storage of forests by up to 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare.

The engineers are elephants. They conduct ‘chronic thinning’ - browsing and killing smaller saplings, alleviating competition in the lower strata and thus increasing the survival and growth rates of larger, more carbon-dense tree species.

Whilst the effect of these ecosystem engineers is remarkable, their cost-effectiveness is even more so: ‘paying’ these engineers for their work (financing their protection) can cost less than $10 per hectare per annum – locking up a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent for less than $1 a year. 

This is in stark contrast to man-made technologies such as “Direct Air Capture”, which require as much as $1000/t to remove a tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Whilst this is not an either/or debate about nature and technology (both solutions will ultimately be needed for future planetary stability), order of magnitude price differences do demonstrate a calamitous market failure: we currently catastrophically overweight our investments in human technologies, and underweight investments in nature.

Africa’s forest elephants are just one example of ecosystem engineers: the disappearance of the world’s megafauna represent nothing less than a silent climate catastrophe.

Scientists warn that just effect of lost seed-dispersal services by forest megafauna – such as chimpanzees, tapirs and hornbills – represents long-term carbon storage damage equivalent to direct human-driven deforestation in the Amazon.

There are multiple added arguments to invest in nature’s carbon farmers too. A dollar of offset finance here does much more than impact greenhouse gas reductions; it comes with a dazzling swathe of additional benefits (for free!).

That is why it is so important that action is taken to support efforts protect them in central African country’s where the last populations remain, such as in Gabon where the government and its wildlife department has shown great leadership to ensure their security.

Healthy, functioning forests of the Congo basin impact rainfall, temperature and water security throughout the continent. In doing so, they ensure stability, agricultural productivity and resilience for hundreds of millions of the region’s human population. 

Keeping intact forests reduces exposure to devastating wildlife-related pandemics that seep out from forests as they are invaded; contrastingly, the astonishing biodiversity of these ecosystems represent an un-tapped pharmaceutical library for future human use. 

Every government, company and individual taking responsibility for their climate impact has a choice: whether to offset their current emissions by investing in man-made technologies or natural ones. For their extraordinary cost-effectiveness, their multi-faceted benefits and their immediate impact, nature’s climate engineers are a truly exceptional investment.

Douglas Flynn is Biodiversity Lead at SYSTEMIQ