Planet Policy Pals Podcast - EP 9: Extra policy- Net Zero Emissions

Jul 11, 2023

EP 53: A Dying Rainforest- Congo

The UN estimated that in 2000 some 1.6 billion people around the world, including many of the world’s poorest, derived at least part of their food, income or medical needs directly from the forest. The Congo rainforest is the second biggest rainforest in the world and has lost more than 600,000 hectares of primary forest in 2020, which is a 9 percent increase compared to 2019, according to recent data from the Global Forest Watch (GFW). The biggest drivers of deforestation in the Congo rainforest over the past 30 years have been small-scale subsistence agriculture, logging, urban expansion, and mining. What has the impact been on the DRC, the general region, and the globe at whole? We discuss this, the lack of global efforts, and more in this episode. Global land use changes are four times greater than previously estimated | Nature Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity | PNAS Land degradation and climate change - resource | IUCN. Climate change: Land degradation and desertification | WHO Deforestation in Africa: Causes, Effects, and Solutions | Earth.Org 3 Surprising Ways Water Depends on Healthy Forests | World Resources Institute Saving Africa’s forests, the ‘lungs of the world’ | Africa Renewal Rainforests in Africa- Mongabay How Colonialism Spawned and Continues to Exacerbate the Climate Crisis | Columbia news COP27: Conserving the Congo Basin rainforest | African Wildlife Foundation US tech giants sued over DRC cobalt mine child labour deaths | Al Jazeera To save the Congo basin rainforest, end the conflict in the DRC | Al Jazeera COP26: Landmark $500 million agreement to protect the DRC forest | UN.org COP27 long on pledges, short on funds for forests | Mongabay.org Women for Forests | WECAN International

48 min