The Congo River's Precarious Timber Trade
As the sun sets over the Congo River, Jean de Dieu Mokuma stands resolute on a raft of logs, his wife Marie-Therese and their two young children by his side. "You can’t be scared of the storms," he declares, his voice echoing over the water. "With the current, once your voyage has begun, there is no turning back." The family is piloting a cargo of timber downstream, lashed to a precarious raft tied to a canoe, navigating one of the world's most treacherous waterways in search of survival.
Stranded in Chaos
Overnight, the Mokuma family finds themselves stranded outside the chaotic trading town of Mbandaka, where port officials have removed components of their outboard motor as assurance for taxes of dubious legality. If they overcome this corruption and the river's relentless currents to arrive in Kinshasa with their raft intact, they stand to make $300 from selling the wood to a lumber mill. "I would stay a fisherman," Mokuma confesses. "But there is no way to make money. In Kinshasa, I can win what we need to survive."
Mokuma is one of millions who depend on the waters and resources of the Congo River basin for their livelihoods. Stretching from the mountains of the Albertine Rift to the Atlantic coast, the 2,900-mile-long river and its tributaries sprawl into six nations, nourishing vast networks of rainforests and swamps that are critical to global ecology.
The Lungs of Africa Under Threat
The Congo basin is the second largest rainforest on Earth, trapping an estimated 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually. It is also one of the planet's most biodiverse ecosystems, home to over 10,000 plant species, more than 400 mammal species, 1,000 bird species, and 700 fish species. However, over half of its forests are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they face immense pressure from a rapidly increasing population and poorly regulated exploitation.
Erick Bayo, a ranger at the Bombo-Lumene nature reserve near Kinshasa, patrols one of the last intact forests in the region. Venturing into the valleys with a squad of Congolese army troops, he reveals clearings of felled trees and swathes of ashen earth blackened from illegal charcoal production. Hundreds of bags ready for transport lie abandoned next to furnace pits. "There was fighting here so the community fled," Bayo explains. "They wouldn’t have left their charcoal otherwise." The patrol works exhaustively under the midday sun to destroy these stocks.
Charcoal and Carbon
Kinshasa, with a population exceeding 18 million and rising, has an inexhaustible demand for cooking charcoal. This cheap alternative to electricity is vital for the estimated 75% of Congolese who survive on less than $2.15 a day. The discovery of a vast peatland underneath the swamp forests of the Congo basin has underscored the urgency of protection. Known as the Cuvette Centrale, these peatland swamps in DRC and the Republic of the Congo contain 30 billion tonnes of trapped carbon.
In the village of Lokolama, nestled in the heart of this ecosystem, community leader Jean-Pierre Ahetoa reflects on newfound knowledge. "It was new for us to discover the word peatland, and learn that our land lets us all breathe clean oxygen," he says. "We always hunted in the forest for antelopes, and searched for honey." The village has adopted an informal approach to conservation, dividing land for fields and construction while leaving the rest intact, in the absence of legal guidance.
River Traffic and Exploitation
From the banks near Lokolama, the challenge of conservation becomes starkly visible. Vast barges carrying hundreds of logs motor downstream, resembling floating cities where traders and crew camp for weeks, bartering with riverside communities for rations and charcoal. At the port of Kinkole, outside Kinshasa, workers scramble into the water to hitch logs to tractors, while traders in colourful dresses oversee the chaotic melee.
These supply chains are often opaque, with recent research suggesting most forest concessions in DRC operate illegally. Between 2001 and 2024, DRC lost 21 million hectares of trees. The future of the "lungs of Africa" hinges on whether conservation efforts can outpace this relentless exploitation, balancing human survival with ecological preservation in one of Earth's most vital ecosystems.
