Activists march in the street of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo to demand climate justice and an end to oil exploration in the Virunga National Park.
Credit: MNKF Creatives
By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India & KINSHASA, DRC, Jul 29 2025 – The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) stands on the precipice of a profound environmental and social crisis, as the government prepares to auction 55 new oil blocks that cover more than half the country’s landmass.
Touted as a pathway to economic growth, the move has triggered fierce backlash from scientists, civil society groups, Indigenous leaders, and international conservationists, who warn that the proposed fossil fuel expansion threatens some of the most ecologically and culturally significant landscapes on Earth.
According to a new report by Earth Insight and its partners, titled “Forests to Frontlines: Oil Expansion Threats in the DRC,” the 2025 licensing round—covering a staggering 124 million hectares—poses catastrophic risks to biodiversity, climate stability, Indigenous rights, and global environmental commitments.
The DRC is home to the world’s second-largest rainforest and the largest tropical peatland complex, known as the Cuvette Centrale. These ecosystems are not just national treasures—they are global climate regulators, storing billions of tonnes of carbon and sustaining rainfall patterns across Africa. But with 66.8 million hectares of intact forest—64% of the country’s remaining wilderness—now within the new oil block boundaries, experts fear the irreversible collapse of one of Earth’s last ecological strongholds.
“The Congo Basin is nearing an ecological tipping point. Further fragmentation could flip its forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources, triggering climate feedback loops with devastating planetary consequences,” the report warns.
Oil Blocks vs. Protected Areas
While the DRC government claims to have spared high-profile protected zones like Virunga National Park from direct overlap with oil blocks, the report reveals that this is a smokescreen. Roughly 8.3 million hectares of protected areas and 8.6 million hectares of Key Biodiversity Areas are still overlapped by the new blocks.
What’s more, even oil blocks positioned just outside protected zones can cause significant harm. Road construction, pipeline development, and increased human encroachment lead to deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and growing tensions between local communities and conservation authorities.
The report underscores that environmental protection on paper means little if the surrounding buffer zones are sacrificed to industrial expansion.
The Green Corridor Betrayed
In January 2025, the DRC government declared the establishment of the Kivu–Kinshasa Green Corridor, an ambitious conservation initiative spanning 540,000 km²—an area the size of France. It was praised as a groundbreaking step toward landscape-scale conservation and sustainable development.
Just months later, however, 72% of this same corridor has been overlapped by newly designated oil blocks.
“The overlap between oil blocks and the Green Corridor undermines the very ecosystems the project was designed to protect. This is a betrayal of community rights, climate action, and biodiversity promises,” Emmanuel Musuyu, Executive Director of CORAP said.
Moreover, local communities whose lands fall within the corridor were not properly consulted. Now, they face the double threat of exclusion under conservation frameworks and degradation from extractive industry—without benefiting from either.
Peatlands in Peril
Perhaps the most dire warning in the report concerns the Cuvette Centrale, the largest tropical peatland on Earth. This region stores an estimated 30 gigatons of carbon—roughly equivalent to global emissions over three years.
The new oil blocks span nearly the entire DRC portion of these peatlands, putting them at imminent risk of degradation. Activities such as drilling, road-building, and seismic testing could drain the wetlands, exposing carbon-rich peat to oxygen and unleashing vast quantities of CO₂ and methane into the atmosphere.
“Even small disturbances in peatlands can trigger runaway emissions. If degraded, they are almost impossible to restore within human timescales,” reads the report.
The Cuvette Centrale is a globally irreplaceable carbon sink. To drill there would not just be short-sighted—it would be a global catastrophe.
“Peatlands are extremely important ecosystems, and the Cuvette Centrale peatlands represent one of the largest terrestrial carbon sinks on the planet. More safeguards need to be established to ensure the integrity of this vital ecosystem is maintained and industrial activities are limited,” Tyson Miller, Executive Director for Earth Insight, who is also one of the report authors, told IPS News.
The Human Cost: 39 Million Lives at Risk
Beyond ecosystems, the oil expansion endangers people—millions of them. The report estimates that 39 million people, nearly half the DRC’s population, live within the newly auctioned oil blocks. These communities rely on forests, rivers, and lands for their survival, livelihoods, and cultural identity.
Especially vulnerable are community forests, legally recognised lands governed by local populations. As of mid-2025, over 4 million hectares of such forests exist—and 63% now fall within oil block boundaries.
These forests represent not just environmental assets but legal victories and instruments of self-determination. Their incursion by oil development violates both national laws and international protections, including the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC).
Contrary to promises of economic upliftment, past oil projects have shown that wealth rarely trickles down to local communities. Instead, they inherit contaminated water, degraded lands, and shattered livelihoods.
“We estimated the number of people living within the boundaries of the newly proposed oil blocks using 2020 UN adjusted constrained population estimate raster data (100m resolution) from WorldPop, a research program based at the University of Southampton. This data uses remotely sensed data to estimate the number of people living in each pixel, which we in turn use to calculate the population under threat. Outdated and missing census data, especially in rural areas, require that we use modelled population datasets,” Miller told IPS News.
Muanda: A Grim Glimpse of the Future
The coastal town of Muanda, home to the DRC’s only active oil operations, serves as a cautionary tale. Despite decades of extraction, Muanda remains among the country’s poorest regions. Locals suffer from polluted mangroves, shrinking fish stocks, and chronic illnesses—while oil revenues enrich foreign companies and Congolese elites.
“Muanda is the least developed oil town in the world. We breathe poisoned air, our natural livelihoods are gone, and there’s no health care to treat our illnesses,” said Alphonse Khonde, a resident.
The DRC now risks exporting this failed model across half its territory.
Civil Society Resists
Congolese civil society is not staying silent. In June 2025, a Week of Action saw protests, press briefings, and international advocacy from Kinshasa to London. At the forefront is the Our Land Without Oil coalition—a powerful alliance of grassroots organisations, Indigenous networks, and legal advocates.
Their message is resolute: “This government cannot claim to be a climate leader while auctioning off our forests and futures. We have a choice: dig our grave with oil or build a livable, dignified, and sovereign future,” said Pascal Mirindi, Campaign Coordinator.
The report also contains several urgent recommendations: cancel the 2025 oil licensing round and halt future hydrocarbon expansion; protect the Cuvette Centrale as a non-negotiable conservation priority; revoke oil blocks within the Green Corridor to honour its original vision; uphold Indigenous and community rights by ensuring free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) and legal land recognition; invest in low-carbon development, including renewables and sustainable mineral extraction; and align international finance with climate goals rather than fossil fuel interests.
The Road Ahead
As the world races to combat climate change, the DRC faces a critical decision. Will it become a model of green leadership or fall into the familiar trap of extractive exploitation? The stakes couldn’t be higher—not just for the Congolese people, but for the planet.
The Congo Basin’s fate is the Earth’s fate. What happens next in the DRC will echo for generations.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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