A Poor Nation—and Its Great Apes—Sits on Valuable Peatlands
- Dhanada K. Mishra
- Dec 18, 2025
- 7 min read
Should Kinshasa Pursue Oil Exploration? Or ‘Conservation Financing’?
Today, there are two kinds of existential cry resounding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a central African nation synonymous with ecological and mineral riches.
One is represented by Jane Goodall, a pioneering primatologist who spent much of her professional life in the DRC but who passed away in October 2025 at age 91. Her role as a global environmental conscience and her legacy of defending great apes and their habitats are colliding with the resource development plans of the DRC government.
The nation is caught between two forces, seeking, on the one hand, to protect its wealth of ecological treasures and, on the other, to exploit its vast reserves of copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, coltan, and tantalum—and possibly oil and gas—worth an estimated $24 trillion. But the development plans may also destabilize the environment for a variety of endangered mammals and other wildlife, sparking the current controversy.
Opening the Forest Gates
In 2025, DRC authorities launched an unprecedented oil and gas licensing round. The “auction,” which dramatically expands a tender from 2022, puts up more than half the country’s land—including millions of acres of pristine rainforest and centuries-old peatlands—for fossil fuel exploration.
Conservationists note that a move like this also places roughly 306 million acres at risk, much of it home to endangered mountain gorillas, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), and Eastern lowland gorillas. They further warn that this is a monumental threat to one of Earth’s irreplaceable carbon sinks—the Cuvette Centrale peatlands, which hold an estimated 30 gigatons of carbon in an anaerobic lockbox beneath its vast boggy upper layer.
The government … argues that oil production can be done responsibly, leaving only a tiny environmental footprint, and could finally lift the DRC onto the world stage.
Civil society groups, both within the DRC and internationally, called for an immediate halt to the auction, warning the fallout could devastate both biodiversity and the lives of nearly 40 million Congolese—many of them Indigenous—who depend on these forests.
Yet the government, caught between much of its population’s desperate poverty and the land’s untapped natural wealth, counters that economic sovereignty, development, and humanitarian relief must come first.
It argues that oil production can be done responsibly, leaving only a tiny environmental footprint, and could finally lift the DRC onto the world stage, funding desperately needed infrastructure, schools, and jobs. It points to the country’s rank as the second-poorest globally, with a gross domestic product per capita of only $753 and an average annual income of $449. In 2023, nearly 75% of the 112 million Congolese lived on less than $2.15 a day, the international threshold for extreme poverty.
A Clash of Imperatives
The DRC government points out the seeming hypocrisy of wealthier countries: Western nations, it notes, grew rich on oil and minerals and now urge the DRC to serve as a carbon sink for others’ carbon dioxide emissions.
Regarding oil exploration, officials promise robust standards—environmental assessments, modern drilling methods, legal protections. Oil firms tout advanced technologies that pare down the footprint of exploration, such as multiwell pads and directional drilling, to reduce surface disruption.
For instance, multiwell pads, as opposed to traditional single-well pads, reduce the surface area required for drilling operations by consolidating multiple wells at a single site; this has proven more efficient and cost-effective as well. Instead of conventional boreholes, which are vertical, directional drilling enables the borehole to be intentionally steered in a specific direction. Several underground reservoirs can be tapped from a single location.
This reduces ecological impact by minimizing land clearing, limiting habitat fragmentation, reducing wildlife disturbance, and allowing operators to avoid drilling directly in sensitive environments. There are many startups that are exploring different aspects of the oil and gas exploration industry to improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact.
But skepticism runs deep. Reports by Earth Insight and partner organizations show that, even with best practices, oil extraction brings infrastructure—roads, pipelines, settlements—that lets poachers, miners, and loggers into previously inaccessible wildlands. The mere presence of oil blocks mapped across gorilla habitats and peatland basins guarantees a cascade of collateral impacts.
And while firms might pledge compensation or reforestation, enforcement remains weak in a nation struggling with corruption and scant resources.
DRC government corruption, in fact, is pervasive and well documented. The country ranks near the bottom of global corruption indices, and networks of politically connected elites have embezzled and laundered public funds. Moreover, multinational companies have admitted bribing officials for mining rights, and state-owned enterprises such as Gecamines have been subject to major embezzlement investigations. Corruption reportedly permeates public services and undermines governance at all levels.
Climate at a Tipping Point
Perhaps the most profound implication of oil and gas drilling is for the climate.
The Cuvette Centrale peatlands store more carbon than all the trees of the Congo Basin combined. Disturbing the land in any extensive way could trigger emissions dwarfing the nation’s annual output, destabilizing one of the globe’s key “carbon brakes.” Researchers warn that drilling infrastructure could degrade these fragile wetlands, releasing methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and accelerating the very climate crisis the world is seeking to prevent.
International diplomats, from the European Union to the UN’s REDD program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), have urged the DRC to preserve these lands and instead pursue “conservation financing”—payments for ecosystem services, carbon markets, sustainable ecotourism, and development aid that reward countries not for exploitation but for stewardship.
Who Gets to Decide?
One of the sharpest battlegrounds is rights and representation for Indigenous communities. Many of the lands at stake are home to people whose ancestry stretches back centuries. Under international law, their “free, prior, and informed consent” is required for extraction projects.
Yet, according to local NGOs, consultation has often been cursory or bypassed entirely. Legal protections on paper may fray in the weeds of distant provinces where oil interests and local powerbrokers hold sway.
Under international law, [Indigenous people’s] “free, prior, and informed consent” is required for extraction projects.
These issues—enforcement, representation, benefit sharing—are not unique to the DRC. They echo in rainforests from Brazil to Borneo, wherever ancient lands are recast as grids on a resource map.
A World on Edge
In this sense, the battle over Congo’s wildlands is universal. Even the most iconic, “protected” places face relentless pressure. In November 2025, US President Donald Trump ignited fresh controversy by resurrecting plans to open up pristine stretches of California and Oregon’s coastlines for oil exploration and drilling—the first such move in decades. His plan is intended to ensure US energy dominance and would permit 21 sales off the coast of Alaska starting next year, seven in the Gulf of America, and six in the Pacific Ocean, from northern to southern California.
As in the DRC, this plan has provoked outrage from state governments, environmental groups, and local residents, who warn such action threatens both biodiversity and the region’s climate credentials.
Opponents say the US government’s plan would expose more than a billion acres of US offshore waters to fossil fuel development, including California’s legendary Pacific coast and Oregon’s marine sanctuaries.
They argue this would lock America more deeply into high-carbon infrastructure at a time when the world’s carbon budget is vanishing and when adoption of renewable energy is increasing, driven by lower cost and environmental appeal.
The drama in Washington and Kinshasa, though continents apart, is a mirror: Wherever there is oil, there is a struggle for control over nature, the climate, and the meaning of “progress.”
Sustainable Paths Forward
Are there alternatives? The DRC has begun to explore conservation-linked revenues—selling “rainforest credits” on international carbon markets, attracting funding for forest protection, and growing the ecotourism sector. But these markets are in their infancy, and rich nations have a mixed record on delivering promised climate finance.
Taking the long view, however, although conservation-linked revenue streams for less-developed nations are currently smaller than fossil fuel income, projections suggest they could become economically significant if carbon markets and biodiversity finance scale rapidly.
Analysis by MSCI estimates the global voluntary carbon-credit market could reach up to $100 billion annually by 2050, providing substantial revenue for nature-based climate solutions. Meanwhile, ecosystem services (the overall benefits provided to humankind by nature) have been valued at over $150 trillion per year, illustrating the vast economic potential of conserving biodiversity. Scaling biodiversity finance to meet international goals will require mobilizing hundreds of billions of dollars annually, indicating that under ambitious market growth scenarios, conservation-linked revenues could approach or rival income from extractive sectors over the long term.
With the rise of renewable energy from solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc., the future of fossil fuel–based energy as a revenue source is far from guaranteed. Consumption of renewable energy is increasing steadily, is projected to be 20% of total energy consumption by 2030, and is expected to drive down the use of fossil fuels in percentage terms by 2050. Thus, even though there is today a voraciously increasing demand for energy and electricity worldwide, fossil fuels’ share of that market is trending down.
Today’s Choices Loom over the Future
The DRC’s oil and gas licensing round illustrates the complexity of energy, climate, development, and good-governance choices facing countries with large untapped resources and globally significant ecosystems. Outcomes will depend on a combination of exploration results, the rigor of regulatory implementation, the effectiveness of low‑impact technologies, the quality of community consultation and benefit sharing, and the availability of credible alternatives through conservation finance, renewable energy substitutes, and broader economic diversification.
For policymakers, investors, and communities alike, the central question is how to reconcile immediate economic aspirations with long‑term stewardship of forests, peatlands, and wildlife that play a critical role far beyond national borders. The decisions made affecting the DRC’s Congo Basin over the coming years will help shape both the country’s development trajectory and the global response to biodiversity loss and climate change.
At such an inflection point, it’s good to recall Jane Goodall, who once said, “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
*Dhanada Kanta Mishra is a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Michigan and is currently working as the managing director of a Hong Kong–based AI startup for building technology for the sustainability of built infrastructure (www.raspect.ai). He writes on environmental issues, sustainability, the climate crisis, and built infrastructure.