Congo River Basin is Under Threat of Wars, Deforestation and Climate Change!

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Cry, the Beloved Congo River Basin!

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The Congo River Basin spreads in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is one of the (Cry, the Beloved Country) states in central Africa that has lost 5.4 million people.

Wars have forced more than 250,000 people to flee their homes only in the last crisis since 1998, and other thousands of women were raped and have children from such crimes, forget about what had happened in many decades in the past.

However, this page is only about the Congo Basin as a beautiful place in the world, its Mbuti pygmies and the affects of climate changes upon all this diversity in humankinds, animal species and plant species.

Congo River Basin Democratic Republic of Congo

Rich natural resources along the Congo River Basin such as gold and diamonds, vast stretches of lush rain forest, and abundant timber make this huge country spectacularly beautiful. However, in spite of its rich natural resources the Democratic Republic of Congo is on of the poorest nations in Africa.

Therefore, the country struggles to recover from both the horrible past and the ongoing war and to restore peace and save the treasures of the nature. Read about politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) here.

People of the DRC are form many identities based of different tribes and they have rich traditional cultures, arts and customs. Among them, the Songye people were one of many human entities on the Congo River Basin.

They faced their fate in the past during the Belgian colonization to safeguard their way of live and identity.

(Historically, the Songye have been portrait and limited to the context of art and music. Little has been said or written about the Songye as a people.)

There is great biodiversity that include rare endemic species such as the common chimpanzee and the bonobo (Pygmy Chimpanzee), mountain gorilla, white rhino and okapi, thus listed as World Heritage Sites by UNSCO.

Wars and trapping the animals and deforestation in addition to climate change are all dangers to the biodiversity in the Congo River Basin.

Rainforests in the Congo River Basin represent 70% of all Africa plant cover and are the second largest rainforests after Amazon. They cover more than one million square kilometres.

More than 40 million people depend on the Congo Basin Rainforests for food, products, energy and medicine. The rainforests stretch to 10 countries where 123 million people live and benefit from the forests.

People living on the Congo River Basin have freshwater and rich fish fauna with different fish species. The Congo River begins in the highlands in the east African rift and stretches 3.7 million square kilometres to end in the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. The area experiences high rainfall and high temperature all year.

One of the indigenous groups, the Mbuti pygmies live in the Ituri forest in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, threaten by non-stability in the country and threat the diversity of the species in the forest as well.

Those nomads are one of the indigenous groups in the African continent and are original inhabitants of Ituri. The forest is both the material and the spiritual underpinnings of their culture and their living conditions.

Pygmies grow to between 130 and 150 centimetres tall and the Mbuti are one of many groups that live along the Congo Basin, which stretches from Cameroon in the west to Zambia in the southeast.

This vast area contains the world's second largest tropical rainforest, surpassed in size only by the Amazon. Rainforest in the Congo Basin is one of the most species-rich areas in the world, and about 90% of the area is untouched. However, an increasing deforestation could change this beautiful picture.

Half of the forest will be gone within the next 50 years, if logging continues at the current pace. This would not only threaten the Mbuti pygmy's livelihoods, but also rare species as okapis, chimpanzee, leopard, elephant and buffalo, all of which live in the Ituri forest.

Large amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, as result of deforestation. In 2004, a massive 8.4 billion tons of CO2 emitted worldwide because of deforestation. This is equivalent to a quarter of the global emissions from fossil fuels.

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