The 55-meter high “flow tower”, which quantifies the carbon absorbed or emitted by the forest, stands in the lush setting of the Yangambi biosphere reserve, which covers some 250,000 hectares along the Congo River, in the province of Tshopo (north-eastern DRC).

The site, renowned during the time of Belgian colonization for its research in tropical agronomy, hosted this week a meeting of scientists as part of a “pre-COP” scheduled for early October in Kinshasa, ahead of the 27th Climate Conference (COP27) in November in Egypt.

Flux towers are numerous around the world, but the Congo Basin did not yet have any, “which limited the understanding of this ecosystem and its role in climate change”, explains project manager Thomas Sibret, from the University of Ghent (Belgium).

The readings from the “CongoFlux” tower, operational since the end of 2020, must be analyzed over time, continues the scientist, but one thing is certain, this tropical forest sequesters more greenhouse gases than it releases.

“We often talk about the first lung, the Amazon, and the second, the Congo Basin”, develops Paolo Cerutti, expert of the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor) and head of operations carried out in Congo by this organization based in Indonesia. .

“It remains at this level, but, according to the forester, we are starting to have evidence that the Amazon is becoming more of an emitter”. “We are therefore betting a lot on the Congo Basin, especially the DRC which has 160 million hectares of forest still capable of absorbing carbon”.

But here too the forest is threatened: “last year, the country lost half a million hectares”, he says.

Industrial or illegal logging contributes to deforestation, but the main reason, he says, is “slash-and-burn agriculture”.

Villagers cultivate, harvest, and when the land becomes poor and yields dwindle, they go further, clear, burn, and start again.

With the demographic explosion, the forest risks disappearing.

– “Inexhaustible” –

“We thought it was inexhaustible… But here, there are no more trees,” laments Jean-Pierre Botomoito, sector manager in Yanonge, 40 km from Yangambi.

It is necessary to travel long distances, on foot or by bicycle on narrow and muddy paths, to find the caterpillars which colonize certain trees and which the Congolese love to eat. Or to have enough to make charcoal, called “makala”, which, for lack of electricity, is used extensively for cooking.

For five years, the “FORETS” project (Training, Research, Environment in the Tshopo), largely funded by the European Union, has been trying to settle farmers while allowing them to live better from their fields and the forest.

In the plots, crops are alternated, cassava and peanuts are planted between fast-growing acacias, which after six years can be used for the production of makala.

Nurseries fuel reforestation. A “pilot farm” shows how to get the most out of a farm, with pineapples here, a pigsty there.

Loggers are told how to select trees. “Improved ovens” allow more makala to be obtained. For lumber, a sawmill is available to legal artisanal operators to produce beautiful planks of afrormosia, red wood, iroko, kosipo…

A wood biology laboratory helps to predict the evolution of the forest. The herbarium, sanctuary of thousands of dried plants collected since the 1930s, has been renovated. And the officials of the “national research program on coffee trees” dream of a revival of the coffee sector, brought to the ground by mismanagement, disease and armed conflict.

– Carbon credits –

“We are farmers, but we did not necessarily have good practices”, admits Jean Amis, leader of a peasant organization.

Hélène Fatouma, who chairs a women’s association, is delighted that the fish ponds around which ducks, chickens and goats frolic have produced 1,450 kg of fish in six months, compared to 30 kg previously.

In a blackened glade scorched with heat, 18-year-old Doloka lifts embers from a still-smoldering oven and rejoices that “the forest is coming back close to home”.

Other villagers are much less enthusiastic.

Some think that the flux tower steals oxygen, others that we want to take their land, dendrometers attached to trunks to measure their growth are vandalized, leaders remain convinced that trees grow back on their own and that successive programs enrich only their promoters.

Cifor teams hope that awareness and education will overcome resistance.

Dieu Merci Assumani, director of the research center of INERA (National Institute for the study and agronomic research), even wants to believe in “the adhesion of all”.

But “the means are lacking”, he regrets, deploring that the Congolese communities do not see the “carbon financing” promised by the “polluting countries” in exchange for the protection of the forest. “Commitments are good, but disbursements are needed,” he annoys.

Asked about the recent auction of oil blocks, including one very close to Yangambi, Mr. Assumani also said he was in favor of oil exploitation, in “respect for the principle of sustainable management”. Unlike some environmentalists, he thinks that “it will be a good thing” for the country and for Africa.