Podcasts about Congo Basin

WFP food warehouse stormed by desperate civilians, as starvation loomsThe UN honours the service and sacrifice of peacekeepersA new $15 million initiative to boost sustainable development in the Congo Basin

In this episode, I'm joined by Kristina Plattner, the managing director of Kamba Rainforest Experiences, a groundbreaking eco-tourism initiative deep in the heart of the Republic of Congo (ROC). Kristina shares her fascinating journey from growing up in the hospitality world of South Africa to creating immersive travel experiences in one of the world's last great rainforests. Her passion for conservation, community engagement, and storytelling shines as we talk about how Kamba connects travelers with the lush, biodiverse environment of the Congo Basin—a region few tourists have explored but which holds incredible ecological and cultural significance. From tracking western lowland gorillas and forest elephants to collaborating with local guides and Ba'Aka communities, Kamba is all about meaningful, ethical, and unforgettable encounters.We also dive into the realities of running a responsible tourism business in such a remote, logistically challenging region. Kristina discusses the balance between luxury and sustainability, the importance of respecting local traditions, and the vision for Kamba to become a leader in regenerative travel across Central Africa. Whether you're a seasoned adventurer or dreaming of going off-grid for the first time, this episode will open your eyes to the beauty and potential of the Republic of Congo as a premier destination for nature and culture lovers alike. If you're seeking untamed wilderness, rare wildlife encounters, and a chance to travel with purpose, this conversation will both inspire and inform.We discuss:✅ What makes Kamba Rainforest Experiences unique✅ How Kristina fell in love with the Congo and transitioned from hospitality in South Africa to jungle adventures in the ROC✅ Gorilla trekking, forest safaris, and cultural immersion with local communities✅ The challenges and rewards of running an eco-tourism initiative in remote Central Africa✅ Why the ROC is an off-the-beaten-path travel gem worth discovering now

Africa stands at the forefront of the global climate crisis, facing extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and biodiversity loss—despite contributing less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As debates intensify over carbon credit agreements, oil exploration in the Congo Basin, and the role of Africa in shaping global climate policy, questions remain about how the continent can advocate for equitable and sustainable solutions.     In this episode, Mvemba is joined by Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, Health, Safety, and Environment Director at Entreprise Générale du Cobalt. Together, they explore Africa's unique climate challenges, the complexities of carbon markets, and the region's growing influence in global environmental negotiations.  

What is THE HERDS? A groundbreaking public art and climate initiative designed to inspire action and renew our bond with the natural world. From April to August 2025, life-size puppet animals will sweep through city centers on a 20,000km journey from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle, fleeing climate disaster. Events and performances by world-class artists will respond as the herds move, bringing together the worlds of arts and science in an urgent call for climate action.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country in the center of Africa. It’s home to spectacular things, like: a majority of the Congo Basin rainforest, the second largest in the world, with magnificent flora and fauna found nowhere else on earth, and a population of one hundred million people belonging to 250 ethnic groups who speak more than 200 languages. The country also has an estimated $24 trillion worth of untapped minerals. That fact has put Congo in the center of international conflict for generations. However, over the last few months, a rebel militia called M23 has taken control of multiple cities in Eastern Congo. These conflicts have reverberated far and wide, as Congolese people displaced by fighting have sought refuge around the world. For those escaping conflict, being granted asylum is only the first step in building a new life. Guests: Floribert Mubalama, the founder and CEO of the Seattle-based Congolese Integration Network Francoise Milinganyo, the Executive Director of Congolese Integration Network University of Washington lecturer Dr. Francis Abugbilla Related Links: Why Are Congo and Rwanda at War? —NYT Martin Gordon, Anglican bishop of Goma, calls for peace in the DRC —NPR Congolese Integration Network Seattle Thank you to the supporters of KUOW. You help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes. Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bryan Simmons, the vice president of communications for the Arcus Foundation, joins the Mongabay Newscast this week to share the philosophy behind the 25-year-old foundation, which funds grantees that work on LGBTQ rights and great apes and gibbons conservation. In this conversation with co-host Mike DiGirolamo, Simmons explains the link between economic development and justice for people and how this is correlated with conservation outcomes. “When people are not able to have their economic needs met, conservation begins to pay the price right away,” says Simmons. He encourages listeners to review recent reports regarding ape conservation and how this relates to human health, disease, and the ‘one health' approach to planetary stewardship. Find more at stateoftheapes.com. Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website. Arcus is a funder of Mongabay, but it did not initiate this interview nor does it have editorial influence on Mongabay's coverage. Image Credit: Young lowland gorilla, Gabon. Photo by Rhett Butler for Mongabay. --- Timestamps (00:00) Bryan's journey to the Arcus Foundation (13:25) How social justice enables conservation (25:47) Threats to human rights and conservation (30:09) Concerns in the Congo Basin (33:26) Hope during a dark period (37:54) Empathy in apes

Catch up on some good wildlife news on this week's Microbruin!Find us on all the things: http://linktr.ee/bearsandbrewspodcastLinks We Discussed:California Wolf Project: https://wildlife.berkeley.edu/cawolfproject/Sources Cited:Charles, Drimal. “Breaking News: Montana Headwaters Legacy Act Passes Committee, Full Senate Vote Next.” Greater Yellowstone Coalition, 19 Nov. 2024, greateryellowstone.org/blog/2024/breaking-news-montana-headwaters-legacy-act-passes-committee-full-senate-vote-next. Cook, Meghan. “742 New Animal Species Discovered in the Congo Basin, according to Latest World Wildlife Fund Report.” Goodgoodgood.co, 4 Dec. 2024, www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/new-animal-species-africa-world-wildlife-fund. Corbley, Andy. “Once Locally Extinct, “Top Predator” River Otter Flourishing Again in New Mexico.” Good News Network, 4 Dec. 2024, www.goodnewsnetwork.org/once-extirpated-top-predator-river-otter-flourishing-again-in-new-mexico/.Justin, Housman. “Wolf Pack Spotted in Lassen Volcanic National Park for First Time.” Nationalparkstraveler.org, 25 Nov. 2024, www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2024/11/wolf-pack-spotted-lassen-volcanic-national-park-first-time. Wendt, John A F, et al. “A 2000-Year Record of Fecal Biomarkers Reveals Past Herbivore Presence and Impacts in a Catchment in Northern Yellowstone National Park, USA.” PLoS ONE, vol. 19, no. 10, 30 Oct. 2024, pp. e0311950–e0311950, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311950. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet has recently returned from Sudan. It's her second visit to the country since April 2023, when the war broke out between the government army and the paramilitary group, the RSF. Lyse says, the humanitarian sitaution in the country is far worse now than it's ever been. She met and spoke to people displaced by the conflict, including women and children and entreprenuers and bankers too. Also, Zimbabwe's High court rules against a law that denies abortion to children and women raped in marriage or in cases of incestAnd a journey into the Congo Basin where more than 700 new species have been discovered!Presenter: Audrey Brown Producers: Rob Wilson, Bella Hassan and Sunita Nahar in London Technical Producer: Francesca Dunne Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp Editors: Alice Muthengi and Andre Lombard

Dateline: December 6, 2024. Rossifari Zoo News is back with a round up of the latest news in the world of zoos, aquariums, conservation, and animal weirdness!   We start off with a random explanation of Lake Effect Snow, talk about meeting baby tree kangaroo Ren, and share about my experience on the NEI TEC Talks Podcast!Our headline story this week looks at the difference between sanctuaries and zoos, and what wild misconceptions people have about the two words. We then move on to our births section, including a new tree kangaroo at Healesville Sanctuary, twin cheetah cubs at Cincinnati, multiple cool births at Taronga Zoo, and more! We also say goodbye to some incredible animals from ZooAmerica, Lincoln Park Zoo, and Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. We then move on to our other Zoo News stories.  This episode features stories from the The San Francisco Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, Zoos Victoria, Riverbanks Zoo, plus an internet company and a really cool study about enrichment. In Conservation News, we share two stories about animals being transported in surprising ways for conservation purposes, why an alligator eating a python is both a cool image and an important conservation message, some of the effects the incoming administration is already having on US conservation policy and conservationists, and a cool story about the Congo Basin.In Other News, we talk about animal statues around the globe and a weird orca behavior making a comeback. HOLIDAY DEALS: Peppermint Narwhal: Use offer code ROSSIFARI at peppermintnarwhal.com for 10% off your order from now through 12/20! Cappy Trails: The entire store is 25% off from 11/28 to 12/2, and from 12/3 to 1/1, all stickers are buy three get one free! Visit cappytrails.com Buoy Bottles: If you visit buoy.eco and email them saying you heard about the product on Rossifari, you'll get a bottle for $25 instead of $29! Zoo King (game): Visit saratogatoy.com and use coupon code ROSSIFARI on any Zoo King bundle to save $10 on your purchase! Tied In Knots Crocheting: Visit tied-in-knots-crocheting.square.site to find your new best friend! ROSSIFARI LINKS: patreon.com/rossifari to support the pod rossifari.com @rossifari on socials @rossifaripod on TikTok 

Clarence Ford speaks to Fidelis Pegue Manga, WWF Communications Manager Congo Basin.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“We don't have clear legislation (for) the carbon market that can guarantee the rights of local communities and indigenous people.”The Congo Basin forest is known as the “lungs of Africa” because of its ability to absorb carbon dioxide – around 1.5 billion tons each year. It also provides food and income for indigenous and local populations in the six countries it spans. And this week, at the COP 29 climate conference, it's being discussed as an example of a carbon sink which can help the world prevent further global warming – and be part of global carbon credit trading. So why – with the forest in urgent need of protection from deforestation - do some activists say Carbon trading is NOT the answer?Presenter: Alan @Kasujja Guests: Ève Bazaiba, DRC Environment Minister. Bonaventure Bondo, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace Africa.

Warning: This episode is not for anyone who is scared of spiders - like Tiernan is. Unfortunately. J'Ba FoFi is said to be a giant spider that lives in the Congo Basin, but does this creepy eight legged creature actually exist? Tiernan hopes not, as he and Athena investigate so you don't have to check the web yourselves. Brought to you by Small Wardour, makers of some of the best podcasts for kids. *** If your chief detectives want to hear more from the investigations, including more compelling evidence and extra fun facts, then you can become a paid subscriber of the show. Just click Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or visit patreon.com/bustortrustpodcast to get access to weekly bonus episodes, ad-free and early listening and exclusive extras. Your support will help us to investigate even more amazing mysteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 18 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 17 2 weeks ago, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week as well. This week we're going to be diving back into learning about historic genocides as we learn about the Congolese genocide committed by King Leopold II of Belgium. We've talked about the Congolese Genocide previously on Day 11, Free Congo. But for today's episode we're going to go into much greater detail about this particular genocide and not just discuss it within the context of a current conflict. Now, before we get to The Alchemist's Table I wanted to apologize that there wasn't a new episode last week. Sometimes you just don't have the energy, the motivation, the spoons or the spell slots. So, I took a week off. It might happen again. And now on to the booze! Today's libation is called Cherries Jubilee. It's 2 oz of Islay scotch. I'd recommend a Bowmore if you're not a huge fan of the peat. Then 1 oz of creme de cacao. 1 oz of frangelico. Add .75 oz of cherry syrup. Shake and pour overice. Top with ginger beer or a hard cider. Garnish with luxardo cherries and enjoy. Now, with that out of the way let's get into the Congolese Rubber Genocide. In order to understand this genocide we first need to understand European colonialism during this time. Colonialism has taken many forms over the years and in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century it transitioned from the classic form of American colonialism into what we would consider New Colonialism. New Colonialism would rely less on direct military control of an area and would rely more on having governmental institutions in power that would directly benefit those pre existing colonial power structures. So, near the end of the 19th century there was very little European colonial and mercantile presence in Africa. There were some port towns, to be sure, and there was trade, but very little of the African continent was under the control of European powers at this time. But, European greed for gold and, especially, ivory wouldn't allow them to ignore African riches for much longer. The Berlin Conference was organized between November 1884 and February 1885 at the request of King Leopold II of Belgium and was organized by Otto von Bismarck of Germany.   The primary purpose of the Berlin Conference was regulating European colonization and trade during the New Imperialism period. It might seem strange to need to differentiate New Imperialism from the forms of empire building that came before. Afterall, the methodology was largely the same. Conquest. And the reasoning was, mostly the same. Resources and land acquisition. But New Imperialism also came with a good deal of “civilizing” flavor. You might be familiar with the poem White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling. If you're not. You can fully understand the entire mindset of 19th and 20th century colonialism simply by reading that poem. Now, Leopold had been using the explorations of Henry Morgan Stanley, and his own organization, the International African Association to quietly try and create his own private colony in central Africa that would be called the Congo Free State, but France found out and started making moves, and then Britain and Portugal found out and began trying to grab land which led Germany to do the same. War was brewing quickly as these various European powerhouses all sought as much land, wealth, and power as they could grab. This, ultimately, would be why the Berlin Conference was called and why it was so successful. These European powers decided, instead of going to war and killing each other over Africa they'd just all meet and carve it up like a pecan pie and settle it all peaceful like. There were 14 nations/empires in attendance at the Berlin Conference, Germany, Austria Hungary, the International Congo Society (this really means King Leopold II of Belgium), Spain, Denmark, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden-Norway, and the Ottoman Empire. And while all 14 of those countries were in attendance at the Berlin Conference and had a say in the final decisions that were made, only 7 countries were actually going to colonize Africa once it was over. Those countries were Belgium (really just King Leopold II, this would be his own private colony), Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain, Portugal, and Italy. At the time of the Berlin Conference, in 1885, less than 10% of the African continent was under European control, but by the time World War 1 broke out only Liberia and Ethiopia were still independent. Although, Liberia certainly only existed because of US colonial power, and so doesn't REALLY count as independent.  Wanna know one of the most buckwild things about the Berlin Conference? I ask knowing that there is no way for you to answer or to stop me from telling you short of skipping forward by about 30 seconds. Part of the General Act, the document that was signed and ratified at the conclusion of the Berlin Conference was a commitment from the European powers involved to END AFRICAN AND ISLAMIC SLAVERY. Most of those European powers would go on to enslave the populations they conquered and colonized. This period of New Imperialism is what we tend to call The Scramble for Africa. So far we've been talking about this all in fairly clinical terms, as if these European countries simply sat around a table and calmly decided who would get what land in the second largest continent on the planet and then it just happened, with no additional muss or fuss. Anyone who has studied even the barest amount of human history knows that nothing happens without muss or fuss. There were wars, and battles, and massacres that led to Europe gaining control of African territory. We now need to talk a bit about the Congo Free State, and how King Leopold of Belgium, a frail weakling (compared to the other European powers) managed to worm his way into the conference and into one of the most lucrative colonies in Africa. The Congo Free State was a truly massive colony that was owned personally by Leopold. It was NOT, at least between the years 1885 and 1908, part of the Belgian Empire, it was not owned by the Belgian government and was ruled entirely separately, it just happened to be ruled by the King of Belgium. Leopold was able to gain this massive colony by convincing the monarchs of Europe that he was engaged in humanitarian and philanthropic work, and that the Congo Free State would be an area of free trade in Africa. He also then proceeded to lie to the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, and the US telling them all that he would give them special trade status. Leopold maintained a guise that he was not trying to use the Congo Basin to increase his own wealth and economic and political power. He maintained that his presence in the region was, as was a huge part of the ethos of New Imperialism, to civilize the savages of the Congo Basin and to bring them closer to God and good European cultural supremacy.  Leopold pledged to suppress the east African slave trade; promote humanitarian policies; guarantee free trade within the colony; impose no import duties for twenty years; and encourage philanthropic and scientific enterprises. Beginning in the mid-1880s, Leopold first decreed that the state asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo territory. In three successive decrees, Leopold promised the rights of the Congolese in their land to native villages and farms, essentially making nearly all of the CFS terres domaniales (state-owned land). Leopold further decreed that merchants should limit their commercial operations in rubber trade with the natives. Additionally, the colonial administration liberated thousands of slaves. Four main problems presented themselves over the next few years. Leopold II ran up huge debts to finance his colonial endeavour and risked losing his colony to Belgium. Much of the Free State was unmapped jungle, which offered little fiscal and commercial return. Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (part of modern South Africa), was expanding his British South Africa Company's charter lands from the south and threatened to occupy Katanga (southern Congo) by exploiting the "Principle of Effectivity" loophole in the Berlin Treaty. In this he was supported by Harry Johnston, the British Commissioner for Central Africa, who was London's representative in the region. The Congolese interior was ruled by Arab Zanzibari slavers and sultans, powerful kings and warlords who had to be coerced or defeated by use of force. For example, the slaving gangs of Zanzibar trader Tippu Tip had a strong presence in the eastern part of the territory in the modern-day Maniema, Tanganyika and Ituri regions. They were linked to the Swahili coast via Uganda and Tanzania and had established independent slave states. So very quickly Leopold began to renege on his promises. The first concession he made to his greed and desire for power was to establish a policy of terres vacantes. Vacant land, which was defined as any land that did not have a house or cultivated garden plot. This was, of course, most of the country. Any terres vacantes was now automatically property of the state to be portioned out to Leopold's cronies and supporters. Next Leopold would decree that any locals harvesting rubber or ivory were only allowed to sell to the state. This was doubly enforced because most of the rubber or ivory harvesting was happening on “state owned land” and so it “mae sense” that they could only sell to the state, which now had a monopoly on those products and could set the prices at whatever they wanted. Trading companies were, obviously, pissed by this as part of the General Act of the Berlin Conference was a promise of Free Trade in Belgium. Now, what made The Congo so special in the history of capitalist exploitation was that it was home to something that would become one of the most important natural resources in the entire world, rubber. There are only two sources of natural rubber in the world. The sap of the Hevea brasiliensis, or rubber tree that grows in the Amazon River Basin, and the sap of Landolphia owariensis, a species of woody vines that grow in the Congo. I mean, technically there are 2500 species of plants that produce natural latex and rubber, but those two are the big ones. Today 99% of natural latex and rubber comes from the Amazon, but Leopold was able to make massive profit off of his colony. By the final decade of the 19th century, John Boyd Dunlop's 1887 invention of inflatable, rubber bicycle tubes and the growing usage of the automobile dramatically increased global demand for rubber. Now, as mentioned previously the rubber in the Congo came from vines. So while the trees in the Amazon basin could be tapped much in the same way we get Maple syrup, the Congolese workers would slash the vines and lather their bodies with the rubber latex. When the latex hardened, it would be scraped off the skin in a quite painful manner, ripping off the workers hair. The economic system in the Congo Free State was known as the red rubber system. It was a slave economy that Leopold enforced through the use of his armed forces known as the Force Publique. The officer corp of the Force Publique was made up entirely of White Europeans, and much of their rank and file was made up of slaves captured by Arabic slavers in the Upper Congo. Many of the other soldiers were children who had been kidnapped from their villages and raised in Roman Catholic missions in conditions very similar to slavery. Each slave in the Congo Free State was required to harvest a regular quota of rubber sap. What that quota was was often arbitrarily decided based purely on profit based concerns. Workers who refused to supply their labour were coerced with "constraint and repression". Dissenters were beaten or whipped with the chicotte, a bullship made of hippo hide, hostages were taken to ensure prompt collection and punitive expeditions were sent to destroy villages which refused. The policy led to a collapse of Congolese economic and cultural life, as well as farming in some areas. One refugee from these horrors described the process: We were always in the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved ... When we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes round their necks and taken away. Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting or to stockpile them for mutiny. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in cut-off hands. A Catholic priest quotes a man, Tswambe, speaking of the hated state official Léon Fiévez, who ran a district along the river 300 mi north of Stanley Pool: “All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator ... From all the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who had to bring them in baskets ... A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man, I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river ... Rubber causes these torments; that's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters.” One junior officer in the Force Publique had this to say about the quota system: The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace ... the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected. Within the Congo Free State there was also rampant famine and disease that killed hundreds of thousands of people, a type of residential school where children were sent to learn to be either workers or soldiers. About 50% of the children who entered these schools died. There were also several reputable reports of Congolese people turning to cannibalism in the face of their lack of food resources. With everyone being forced to harvest rubber there was no one to farm or gather or hunt for food. It is generally accepted that over the course of Leopold's rule in the Congo Free State, between 1885 and 1908 that at least 10 million Congolese people were killed. The peak year for the cost of rubber was 1903, with rubber fetching the highest price and concessionary companies raking in the highest profits. However, the boom sparked efforts to find lower-cost producers. Congolese concessionary companies started facing competition from rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia and Latin America. As plantations were begun in other tropical regions around the world, the global price of rubber started to dip. Competition heightened the drive to exploit forced labour in the Congo in order to lower production costs. Meanwhile, the cost of enforcement was eating away at profit margins, along with the toll taken by the increasingly unsustainable harvesting methods. As competition from other areas of rubber cultivation mounted, Leopold's private rule was left increasingly vulnerable to international scrutiny. Missionaries carefully and meticulously documented the many abuses of the Congolese Red Rubber system. This would finally be noted by the international community and by the Belgian government itself as a violation of the 1885 Berlin Act which gave Leopold authority and control of the Congo as long as he: "care[d] for the improvements of their conditions of their moral and material well-being" and "help[ed] in suppressing slavery." After 2 years of international pressure the Belgian government agreed to annex the Congo Free State and make it an official part of the Belgian Empire. The reason the debate lasted 2 years was that no one wanted to take on the responsibility of fixing everything Leopold had fucked up so royally (pun intended). But what happened to Leopold you ask? Did he go to jail? Did he get a slap on the wrist? Was he deposed as king and sent into exile on a small island in the Pacific where he eventually died of stomach cancer? Nah, he did die though, but he died as King of Belgium. He had surgery on December 17, 1909. He had a coronary bridging performed, aiming at correcting insufficient irrigation of the myocardium. ''A few hours after the operation, a failure of the myocardium occurred leading to death the same day''. Leopold had ruled Belgium for 44 years, which makes him, to this day, the longest reigning Belgian monarch. You also might be please to know that his funeral procession was booed by every crowd he passed. His people fucking hated him. Exciting news y'all! We actually DO have some reviews this week! So let's read em! And now for the outro! Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you  for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day.        

Last year, Mongabay launched a brand-new bureau dedicated to covering the African continent daily in French and English. The team is led by veteran Cameroonian journalist David Akana, who chats with co-host Mike DiGirolamo about the importance of covering the African continent and why news that happens there is of keen interest to audiences worldwide. Akana details his team's coverage priorities, including solutions-oriented stories, which he says are vital to delivering a fair picture of the continent. "The bottom line here is that whatever happens – whether it's in the business of forests [or] biodiversity or climate change in the Congo Basin [it] has linkages to anywhere else in the world," he says. View all of Mongabay Africa's coverage at its website, here. *Come celebrate Jane Goodall's 90th birthday, and Mongabay's 25th anniversary, during an event hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco (or virtually) by purchasing tickets at this link. To get $10 off, use promo code C1PARTNER. * Read a related Q&A with David Akana here. Love this conversation? Please share it with a friend! If you enjoy the Mongabay Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing. Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet, and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates. Please send your ideas and feedback to submissions@mongabay.com. Image: David Akana giving an interview at COP 28 in Dubai, UAE. Image courtesy of David Akana. --- Timecodes (00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:18) David's Journey to Mongabay (00:06:28) Focus Areas of Mongabay Africa (00:10:46) Challenges in African Media Coverage (00:12:09) A Multilingual Reporting Strategy (00:15:27) Engaging With African Audiences (00:18:46) Making An Impact in the Congo Basin (00:22:40) Importance of Congo Basin Coverage (00:26:16) Future Vision for Mongabay Africa (00:29:40) Why Everyone Should Be Reading African News (00:33:23) David's Favorite Spot In Nature

Content warning for discussion of genocide, torture, mutilation, rape, and slavery Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 11 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 10 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we're going to be talking about the currently ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the long history of capitalist exploitation, western imperialism, and systemic racism that led to it. But first, as is tradition, let's take a trip over to the Alchemists Table to see what potion we've got for today. Today's libation has a lot going on in it, it's called Underworld Vacation. It starts by adding some strawberries and blueberries to the bottom of your shaker with .75 of an ounce of rose simple syrup before muddling the fruit. Then add one ounce each of pomegranate and elderflower liquor followed by 2 oz of Hendricks Lunar gin, add ice to your shaker and then stir for about 30 seconds before straining into a highball glass and topping with about 4 oz of prosecco. With that out of the way it's time to talk, once again, about the most important part of history. The proverbial devil in the literal details, context. Because to understand what is happening in the DRC today you need to understand the Kivu Conflict, and to understand that you need to understand the Second Congo War, and to understand that you need to understand the First Congo War, and to understand that you need to understand the end of the Rwandan Genocide and the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, and to understand that you need to understand the Scramble for Africa, The Berlin Conference and King Leopold !! of Belgium. So, we've got a lot to cover, and we're going to be doing it in fairly broad strokes, but it might still take us a while, so let's get started with the Berlin Conference. Near the end of the 19th century there was very little European colonial and mercantile presence in Africa. There were some port towns, to be sure, and there was trade, but very little of the African continent was under the control of European powers at this time. But, European greed for gold and, especially, ivory wouldn't allow them to ignore African riches for much longer. The Berlin Conference was organized in 1885 at the request of King Leopold II of Belgium and was organized by Otto von Bismarck of Germany.   Leopold had been using the explorations of Henry Morgan Stanley, and his own organization, the International African Association to quietly try and create his own private colony in central Africa that would be called the Congo Free State, but France found out and started making moves, and then Britain and Portugal found out and began trying to grab land which led Germany to do the same. War was brewing quickly as these various European powerhouses all sought as much land, wealth, and power as they could grab. This, ultimately, would be why the Berlin Conference was called and why it was so successful. These European powers decided, instead of going to war and killing each other over Africa they'd just all meet and carve it up like a pecan pie and settle it all peaceful like. There were 14 nations/empires in attendance at the Berlin Conference, Germany, Austria Hungary, the International Congo Society (this really means King Leopold II of Belgium), Spain, Denmark, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden-Norway, and the Ottoman Empire. And while all 14 of those countries were in attendance at the Berlin Conference and had a say in the final decisions that were made, only 7 countries were actually going to colonize Africa once it was over. Those countries were Belgium (really just King Leopold II, this would be his own private colony), Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain, Portugal, and Italy. At the time of the Berlin Conference less than 10% of the African continent was under European control, but by the time World War 1 broke out only Liberia and Ethiopia were still independent. Although, Liberia certainly only existed because of US colonial power, and so doesn't REALLY count as independent.  This period of New Imperialism is what we tend to call The Scramble for Africa. Sof ar we've been talking about this all in fairly clinical terms, as if these European countries simply sat around a table and calmly decided who would get what land in the second largest continent on the planet and then it just happened, with no additional muss or fuss. Anyone who has studied even the barest amount of human history knows that nothing happens without muss or fuss. There were wars, and battles, and massacres that led to Europe gaining control of African territory, but that's not the topic of today's podcast. We now need to talk a bit about the Congo Free State, and how King Leopold of Belgium, a frail weakling (compared to the other European powers) managed to worm his way into the conference and into one of the most lucrative colonies in Africa. The Congo Free State was a truly massive colony that was owned personally by Leopold. It was NOT, at least between the years 1885 and 1908, part of the Belgian Empire, it was not owned by the Belgian government and was ruled entirely separately, it just happened to be ruled by the King of Belgium. Leopold was able to gain this massive colony by convincing the monarchs of Europe that he was engaged in humanitarian and philanthropic work, and that the Congo Free State would be an area of free trade in Africa.  Leopold maintained a guise that he was not trying to use the Congo Basin to increase his own wealth and economic and political power. He maintained that his presence in the region was, as was a huge part of the ethos of New Imperialism, to civilize the savages of the Congo Basin and to bring them closer to God and good European cultural supremacy.  Of course, all of that was a lie, and that lie would reveal itself over the intervening years. The Congo was home to something that would become one of the most important natural resources in the entire world, rubber. There are only two sources of natural rubber in the world. The sap of the Hevea brasiliensis, or rubber tree that grows in the Amazon River Basin, and the sap of Landolphia owariensis, a species of woody vines that grow in the Congo. I mean, technically there are 2500 species of plants that produce natural latex and rubber, but those two are the big ones. Today 99% of natural latex and rubber comes from the Amazon, but Leopold was able to make massive profit off of his colony. The economic system in the Congo Free State was known as the red rubber system. It was a slave economy that Leopold enforced through the use of his armed forces known as the Force Publique. Each slave in the Congo Free State was required to harvest a regular quota of rubber sap. What that quota was was often arbitrarily decided based purely on profit based concerns. Workers who refused to supply their labour were coerced with "constraint and repression". Dissenters were beaten or whipped with the chicotte, hostages were taken to ensure prompt collection and punitive expeditions were sent to destroy villages which refused. The policy led to a collapse of Congolese economic and cultural life, as well as farming in some areas. Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting or to stockpile them for mutiny. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in cut-off hands. A Catholic priest quotes a man, Tswambe, speaking of the hated state official Léon Fiévez, who ran a district along the river 300 mi north of Stanley Pool: “All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator ... From all the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who had to bring them in baskets ... A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man, I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river ... Rubber causes these torments; that's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters.” One junior officer in the Force Publique had this to say about the quota system: The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace ... the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected. Within the Congo Free State there was also rampant famine and disease that killed hundreds of thousands of people, a type of residential school where children were sent to learn to be either workers or soldiers. About 50% of the children who entered these schools died. There were also several reputable reports of Congolese people turning to cannibalism in the face of their lack of food resources. With everyone being forced to harvest rubber there was no one to farm or gather or hunt for food. It is generally accepted that over the course of Leopold's rule in the Congo Free State, between 1885 and 1908 that at least 10 million Congolese people were killed. Eventually word got out of what was happening in the Congo Free State and a conclave of the European powers of the Berlin Conference was called as, even they, decided that Leopold was going too far. Leopold offered to reform his government and economic system in the Congo, but no one would give him the chance, but also, no one wanted to take on the responsibility of rebuilding the Congo. Eventually, after two years of debate, the Belgian Parliament took over control of the Congo. Leopold would die about a year later in 1909. The Congo would remain under under Belgian control for another 50+ years, and while the abuses and overwhelming violence of King Leopold's rule were curbed. They even added a clause to the new Colonial Charter to outlaw slavery. Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter of 18 October 1908 stated that: "Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates", but this was not enforced, and the Belgian government continued to impose forced labour on the indigenous people of the area, albeit by less obvious methods. So, even without King Leopold, the Belgian Congo was still a European colony, which means it was still exploited for profit. African independence movements existed throughout the entirety of European colonialism and imperialism in Africa, excepting Liberia the first country in Africa to gain independence from direct European control would be South Africa which would nominally gain its independence in 1910 after the creation of the Union of South Africa and would formally gain official independence when the last vestiges of British parliamentary control would leave the country in 1931 with the Statute of Westminster, and while there would be other successful independence movements after World War 1, such as Egypt, most African decolonization would come after World War 2, including the Congo's.  Nationalist movements popping up in various African nations and agitating for Independence is, generally speaking, what would eventually cause all of African independence, and this would be no different for the Congo. Though, something that is often also common in the case of independence movements that emerged between the end of World War 2 and the early 1990s is that they would become proxy wars for the US and the USSR during the Cold War. To make a long, complex story very short, the US came out on top in this war. The nationalist movements within the Congo largely emerged amongst a class of people called the évolués, which is a term that was used in French and Belgian colonies for “evolved ones”, people of African descent who had become somewhat Europanized through education.  One of the deciding moments in Congolese independence came in the form of the Leopoldville Riots of 1959. Joseph Kasa-Vubu, who would become the first President of an independent Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the leader of the ABAKO political party, the Alliance of Bakongo. The riots began because many young folks and members or sympathizers of the ABAKO party felt that the government was forbidding them from organizing and protesting. The riots broke out on the 4th of January, 1959. The crowd began throwing rocks at police and attacking white motorists. The initial group of protesters were soon joined by 20,000 Congolese leaving a nearby soccer stadium. At the time press accounts estimated that 35,000 Africans were involved in the violence, which quickly spread as the rioters attempted to enter the European section of the capital. Rioters allegedly smashed and looted storefronts, burned Catholic missions and beat Catholic priests. Many demonstrators chanted "indépendance immédiate" The Belgian Parliament established a commission of inquiry to investigate the cause of the riots. The commission found the disturbances to be the culmination of discontent with racial discrimination, overcrowding, and unemployment. It also concluded that external political events, such as France's decision to grant self-governance to the neighboring French Congo, to be a contributing factor, and criticized the colonial administration's response to the riot. On 13 January the administration went forward with its scheduled announcement of reforms, including new local elections in December, the institution of a new civil service statue that made no racial distinctions, and the appointment of more Africans to advisory bodies. The Belgian King, Baudouin, also declared for the first time that independence would be granted to the Congo in the future. January 4th is still celebrated as an auspicious day in the DRC, it's the Day of the Martyrs and denotes a turning point in the independence movement. Congolese independence was officially declared, as planned, on the 30th of June, 1960, with Kasa-Vubu of the ABAKO elected as president and Patrice Lumumba of the Congolese National Movement appointed as the Prime Minister. Now, despite the DRC formally being declared as independent at this day, they still relied heavily on Belgian colonial institutions that had been in place previously, like the Force Publique and various white technical experts who couldn't be replaced in the face of a lack of ready replacements available amongst the Congolese people. The fact that this lack of available peoples being a result of European colonialism forbidding Congolese people from higher education wound up being somewhat irrelevant, but absolutely caused greater levels of resentment among the newly independent Congolese. In the face of this lack of change and in the face of an address given by Lieutenant General of the Force Publique Émile Janssens, many of the Congolese troops mutinied. The address went as follows: "Independence brings changes to politicians and to civilians. But for you, nothing will be changed ... none of your new masters can change the structure of an army which, throughout its history, has been the most organized, the most victorious in Africa. The politicians have lied to you." Instead of sending in Belgian troops to put down the mutiny, as Janssens wanted, Lumumba fired him and began to institute some reforms, including immediately remaining the Force Publique to the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC) and promoting all black soldier by at least one rank. While this had success in Leopoldville and Thysville, it failed in the rest of the country and the mutiny intensified. The government attempted to stop the revolt—Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu intervened personally at Léopoldville and Thysville and persuaded the mutineers to lay down their arms—but in most of the country the mutiny intensified. White officers and civilians were attacked, white-owned properties were looted and white women were raped. The Belgian government became deeply concerned by the situation, particularly when white civilians began entering neighbouring countries as refugees. The international press expressed shock at the apparent sudden collapse of order in the Congo, as the world view of the Congolese situation prior to independence—due largely to Belgian propaganda—was one of peace, stability, and strong control by the authorities. The Congo Crisis would run for 5 years and would end with the torture and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, with Joesph Kasa-Vubu dying while under house arrest, and with the military dictator Mobuto Sese Seko “elected” as the president of the Republic of Congo-Leopoldville. This would note just one in the long string of times that the US helped to install a military dictator in order to overthrow a democratically elected left wing government, just because they had support from the USSR and the US feared (and fears) any threat to their capitalist hegemony. Between 1965 and 1971 Mobutu consolidated his hold on power as much as he could, removing all provincial control over anything and bringing every scrap of infrastructure he could under the control of himself and his central government. In 1971, with his hold on power relatively secure and as part of his policy of Africanization of the Congo's culture and government Mobutu renamed the Republic of Congo Leopoldville to Zaire, a name that was derived from the Kikongo wore nzere, meaning “river that swallows all rivers”. Mobutu would remain as “president” of Zaire all the way until 1997, but his hold on power would begin to crumble with the First Congo War that began in 1993. Now comes the time for more context. What started the First Congo War? Honestly, to a certain extent we can view the First Congo War as an extension of the Rwandan Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide began in 1994 as a final culmination of ethnic tensions that were exacerbated by, first, German and the Belgian colonialism. See, Rwanda used to be a German colony, Rwanda was one of the nations that Germany got as part of the Scramble for Africa, but after World War 1, with the signing of the treaty of Versailles Germany was forced to give up all of its overseas colonies. Belgium gained control of Rwanda. Belgium maintained many of the systems of power and oppression that Germany had put into place, most notably the fact that they put the Tutsi ethnic group in positions of authority and disenfranchised the Hutu and Twa ethnic group. The Twa are the indigenous ethnic group of Rwanda, but by the time the Rwandan genocide occurred they were only about 1% of the population, about 85% were Hutu and the remaining 14% were Tutsi. Still, based on the indicators of European scientific racism and phrenology the Tutsi had more “European features” and so were considered superior to the Hutu ethnic group and placed, exclusively, in positions of authority. The sudden shift in power dynamics after Rwandan independence is what would lead to the Rwandan Genocide as Hutu supremacists decided to vent their fury on the Tutsi people. We won't go into any more detail than that for the Rwandan genocide. Suffice it to say that when it ended hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsi people had fled the nation of Rwanda to neighboring African countries, such as Zaire. Roughly 1.5 million ethnic Tutsi people wound up settling in Zaire. There were also about 1 million Hutu extremists in eastern Zaire who had fled the retaliation of the Rwandan Patriotic Front at the end of the Rwandan Civil War and the Rwandan Genocide. As mentioned previously, the First Congo War, also known as Africa's First World War can most simply be seen as an extension of the Rwandan Genocide. Zaire had been in decline since Mobutu gained power in 1965. He was a terrible leader and the average GDP of Zaire dropped by about 65% during his reign. Eastern Zaire was a region of massive instability that was only made worse by the number of Hutu extremists who fled to the region following the Rwandan Genocide. Rwanda, just fully, invaded Zaire in 1996 in order to put down various Hutu rebel groups that were extant in the region. These rebel groups were actively funded and supported by Mobutu's government leading to this war that lasted for some 6 months. It involved several African nations including Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Burundi, Zambia, ZImbabwe, South Sudan, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia, Chad, China, Israel, and Kuwait. Following the war Mobutu went into exile in the nation of Togo where he eventually died of prostate cancer in 1997. Zaire came under the rule of the communist aligned Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila had heavy support from Rwandan, Burundian, and Ugandan forces during his rise to power in the form of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. Kabila also came to be seen as an instrument of the foreign regimes that put him in power. To counter this image and increase domestic support, he began to turn against his allies abroad. This culminated in the expulsion of all foreign forces from the DRC on 26 July 1998. The states with armed forces still in the DRC begrudgingly complied although some of them saw this as undermining their interests, particularly Rwanda, which had hoped to install a proxy-regime in Kinshasa. Several factors that led to the First Congo War remained in place after Kabila's accession to power. Prominent among these were ethnic tensions in eastern DRC, where the government still had little control. There the historical animosities remained and the opinion that Banyamulenge, as well as all Tutsi, were foreigners was reinforced by the foreign occupation in their defence. Furthermore, Rwanda had not been able to satisfactorily address its security concerns. By forcibly repatriating refugees, Rwanda had imported the conflict. This manifested itself in the form of a predominantly Hutu insurgency in Rwanda's western provinces that was supported by extremist elements in eastern DRC. Without troops in the DRC, Rwanda was unable to successfully combat the insurgents. In the first days of August 1998, two brigades of the new Congolese army rebelled against the government and formed rebel groups that worked closely with Kigali and Kampala. This marked the beginning of the Second Congo War. The Second Congo War is generally considered to be the deadliest war since World War 2. Over the course of this war some 5.4 million excess deaths took place.  Now comes the time where I need to define what an excess death is. In epidemiology, the excess deaths or excess mortality is a measure of the increase in the number deaths during a time period and/or in a certain group, as compared to the expected value or statistical trend during a reference period (typically of five years) or in a reference population. It may typically be measured in percentage points, or in number of deaths per time unit. To put it more simply, disease, depravation, and starvation were so rampant during the Second Congo War that the overwhelming majority of deaths weren't caused directly by the fighting, but were caused by the residual damage of the fighting. The Second Congo War involved many of the same issues of the First Congo War. It would end with Laurent-Désiré Kabila assassinated in 2001 in his office by an 18 year old former child soldier. Laurent would be replaced as president by his son Joseph Kabila, who was elected unanimously by the Congolese parliament. To further highlight the complexity of the Congolese Wars, In April 2001, a UN panel of experts investigated the illegal exploitation of diamonds, cobalt, coltan, gold and other lucrative resources in the Congo. The report accused Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe of systematically exploiting Congolese resources and recommended the Security Council impose sanctions. All conflicts within Congolese territory will ultimately go back to economic exploitation and capitalist overreach. The Congo Basin is full of some of the most valuable natural resources that exist on the planet, and people will always be fighting over them. This leads us into the Kivu conflict. The Kivu conflict is an umbrella term for a series of protracted armed conflicts in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo which have occurred since the end of the Second Congo War. This includes, but is not limited to Effacer le tableau, which was a genocidal extermination campaign against the Mbuti Pygmy ethnic group. The Bambuti were targeted specifically as the rebels considered them "subhuman", and it was believed by the rebels that the flesh of the Bambuti held "magical powers". There were also reports of cannibalism being widespread. It is estimated 60,000 to 70,000 Pygmy were killed in the campaign, and over 100,000 more were displaced. There are more than 120 distinct rebel groups involved in the Kivu Conflict, including the March 23 Movement, which a UN report indicates was created by the Rwandan government in order to potentially take over the Congolese government. Conflict began in 2004 in the eastern Congo as an armed conflict between the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the Hutu Power group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) has played a large role in the conflict. With 21,000 soldiers in the force, the Kivu conflict constitutes the largest peacekeeping mission currently in operation. In total, 93 peacekeepers have died in the region, with 15 dying in a large-scale attack by the Allied Democratic Forces, in North Kivu in December 2017. The peacekeeping force seeks to prevent escalation of force in the conflict, and minimise human rights abuses like sexual assault and the use of child soldiers in the conflict. In 2007 and 2008, in several news and TV reports, the BBC published own evidence about Pakistani MONUC peacekeepers in Mongbwalu had entered in a gold-for-guns trading relationship with Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) militia leaders, eventually drawing Congolese army officers and Indian traders from Kenya into the deal. Following its own investigations, the UN concluded that there was no involvement of Pakistani peacekeeper in any such trade relationship. Namely Human Rights Watch harshly criticized the UN for the way it handled the investigation, providing detailed information from several UN documents, arguing that serious allegations of wrongdoing by Pakistani peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo were ignored, minimized or shelved by the UN's Organization of Internal Oversight Services. MONUC officials say nothing of substance about mining in Congo, which proceeds in parallel with the bloodletting, arms trading and extortion. For example, Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC. Anvil directors include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Brown, who served at U.S. embassies in Brussels, Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville and South Africa. Brown was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (1987–1989) under George Shultz and George H.W. Bush and Director of Central African Affairs (1980–1981). Interestingly, Brown succeeded William Lacy Swing—head of MONUC in DRC—as Ambassador to the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). Meanwhile, the former top internal intelligence and security chief of the United Nations Observer's Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been worked for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006. There have been numerous cases of sexual misconduct by UN peacekeeping forces in the Congo. This has been acknowledged by the UN itself (such as the letter of 24 March 2005 from the Secretary-General to the President of the General Assembly). So, basically foreign powers both within Africa and outside of it are actively fighting within the Congo Basin in order to secure control of the vast amount of natural resources that exist within the nation. The DRC currently produces about 70% of the world's cobalt, and 80% of the cobalt mines in the DRC are owned by China. The leading use of cobalt in modern technology is in rechargeable batteries. So your cell phone battery, your laptop batteries, any kind of rechargeable battery you have is likely created using Congolese cobalt, which is a direct cause of the millions of deaths and displacements that are occuring in the DRC.  The DRC is, effectively, the site of a capitalist proxy war as the region is fought over by foreign governments and local rebel groups for control over Congolese natural resources. No one in Europe or the US would even begin to care about an African country if it wasn't for the battery technology resources that are so abundant in the region. Between 1885 and today it is, very easy, to say that roughly 20 million people have been killed by capitalist excess and exploitation.  We can, absolutely call what is happening in the DRC a genocide, though it can be difficult to always pinpoint who, exactly are the victims. Broadly speaking the victims are the Congolese people, all of them, who are being killed over a desire to control the cobalt mines. This has gone far beyond simple ethnic conflict between Hutu and Tutsi, though that conflict, which is still ongoing, definitely added to the fire. This is a genocide of the people of the DRC by capitalism itself. Capitalism has always been, and will always be an inherently genocidal institution. It craves the acquisition of individual wealth at the expense of the working class. You cannot have a system predicated on infinite growth within a closed system. Capitalism will always require that resources and wealth be stolen from people who need them. And when so much of our wealth is tied up in food, water, and housing, the theft of those resources from the working class will lead to our deaths. For the past century and a half the Congo Basin has been subjected to genocide after genocide in the name of capitalism. What is happening right now is only an extension of that, though made far more complicated by the literal hundreds of competing groups and the lack of any international will to see peace achieved. That's it for this week folks. No new reviews, so let's get right into the outro. Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you  for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day, and Free Congo.    

On this show we take a journey through the challenges facing our world's forests. What does it take to protect tropical rainforests in places like the Amazon from illegal logging? What about the corporations profiting off the illegal logging trade? Host Jack Eidt speaks with Forest Policy Specialist Scott Paul on his transition from activism with Greenpeace to corporate sustainability with Taylor Guitars. Many of the woods traditionally chosen to make acoustic guitars are under pressure due to a range of factors, including rising global consumption patterns and land conversion, and too often in many parts of the world, a lack of dedicated governance. Stressing the importance of ethical wood sourcing for musical instruments, Scott Paul shares how Taylor Guitars' innovative projects in Cameroon and Hawaii are setting new standards for environmental responsibility in the music industry. We hope to uncover the intricate relationship between forests, guitars, and global sustainability. For an extended interview and other benefits, become an EcoJustice Radio patron at https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio Resources/Articles: https://woodandsteel.taylorguitars.com/authors/scott-paul/ Scott Paul is Taylor Guitar's Director of Sustainability [https://www.taylorguitars.com/about/sustainability]. Prior to this, the majority of his career was spent as a forest policy specialist and activist, including 14 years at Greenpeace. Scott has worked for The White House Office on Environmental Policy, participated in the UN forest policy dialogue since 1995, and has served on multiple boards of directors, including the Forest Stewardship Council. His work has taken him to the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Southeast Asia, the Canadian boreal, Alaska, and the Russian Far East. He is also the first person in over 100 years to have been arrested for Sailormongering. Jack Eidt is an urban planner, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. He is Co-Founder of SoCal 350 Climate Action and Executive Producer of EcoJustice Radio. He is also Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia [https://wilderutopia.com], a website dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Executive Producer and Host: Jack Eidt Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats Episode 222 Photo credit: Scott Paul

How The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Africa use partnerships, science, and sustainable finance to tackle the biodiversity crisis, with our guest Ademola Ajagbe.Today we're speaking with an old friend and colleague Ademola Ajagbe, the Regional Managing Director atThe Nature Conservancy (TNC) for Africa.Ademola discusses the urgent challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, emphasizing the need for scalable solutions and partnership-based approaches for meaningful impact.He shares TNC's mission, its' conservation model, and strategies for using partnership, science, and sustainable finance to tackle the biodiversity crisis.We also discuss TNC's work in Africa, highlighting specific conservation efforts in the Congo Basin and innovative projects like the Nairobi Water Fund.Ademola then recounts his journey from a childhood fascinated by nature to his career in conservation - offering insights into effective leadership, the importance of partnership, and the transformational power of local capacity building in conservation efforts.Finally, Ademola provides career advice for those aspiring to work in conservation, underscoring the importance of passion, impact, people skills, and resilience in the face of challenges.It's a wide-ranging, impactful and Africa-focussed podchat.Enjoy.

A prominent French TV journalist was visibly surprised when DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi bluntly told him that he prefers to work with Chinese and Russian partners rather than those from the West. The exchange was posted this week on X and reveals the increasingly stark gap between African and Western perceptions over the major geopolitical changes that are taking place today as part of the Great Power rivalry and the various wars going on in Europe and the Middle East. International relations analyst Ovigwe Eguegu joins Géraud from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to discuss how powerful geopolitical forces are impacting China's ties in Africa. JOIN THE DISCUSSION: X: @ChinaGSProject | @stadenesque | @eric_olander | @hmryder Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ChinaGlobalSouth FOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC: Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChine Arabic: عربي: www.alsin-alsharqalawsat.com | @SinSharqAwsat JOIN US ON PATREON! Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug! www.patreon.com/chinaglobalsouth  

Justin Wren is a humanitarian, author, journalist, former MMA fighter, and founder of the Fight for the Forgotten charity. After overcoming depression and addiction early in his MMA career, Justin embarked on a life-changing journey with the Mbuti Pygmy people of the Congo Basin rainforest. Inspired by a transformative vision, he founded Fight for the Forgotten to combat the global water crisis and expand its impact to serve the Batwa Pygmies of Uganda.   Key Takeaways   The Essentials: Personal practices, such as meditation, gratitude, and spending quality time with loved ones, are essential for maintaining a positive mindset and cultivating self-mastery. Overcoming Depression and Addiction: Purpose-driven service can be a powerful tool for personal transformation and healing, as demonstrated by Justin's journey from overcoming depression and addiction to founding Fight for the Forgotten. Empowering Communities: Providing tools, knowledge, and resources to develop sustainable livelihoods is a more effective approach to creating lasting change than short-term, unsustainable aid. Sustainability and Rainforests:  Rainforests play a critical role in maintaining the Earth's ecological balance, and indigenous people, such as the Mbuti Pygmies, are essential stewards of these ecosystems. How to Create Lasting Change: Collaboration between nonprofits and NGOs is crucial for creating a more significant impact and addressing complex global challenges, such as the water crisis and the displacement of indigenous communities. It All Starts Within: Loving oneself and cultivating self-mastery is essential for being able to serve others effectively and create meaningful change in the world.   Sponsors and Promotions:   Henson Shaving:  Go to https://www.hensonshaving.com and enter DIVINE at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.)   Defender:  Ready for adventure? With a family of vehicles to choose from, you'll have the space, technology, and performance to go further than ever before. Explore the Defender lineup at https://www.LandRoverUSA.com/Defender      Momentus: Designed by the world's best experts, used by the world's best teams and athletes, and made for all of us.   https://www.livemomentous.com, and use code DIVINE for 20% off your first order.   SealFit ElectroGreens: Fuel your body and conquer your limits with SealFit ElectroGreens - a USDA organic superfood packed with over 25 organic fruits, vegetables, and electrolytes. Head to Amazon, search for "SealFit ElectroGreens," and use code SEALGREENS25 at checkout for 25% off your order.  

The central African Republic of Cameroon is partially located in the Congo Basin - one of the greenest lungs in the world - but nevermind botanicals and giant frogs, we're here for the funk. Jean Marie Taim and Maurice Foty Kembiwo aka J.M. Tim & Foty, were a Cameroonian musical duo that released a series of funk-infused banger LPs in the late 1970s - and we shall explore and enjoy the first of those.

African forest elephants play a crucial role in shaping the Congo rainforest ecosystem, two experts explain on this episode. As seed dispersers and maintainers of forest corridors and clearings, they are sometimes referred to as "gardeners of the forest."    Their small and highly threatened population needs additional study and conservation prioritization, since the loss of this species would fundamentally change the shape and structure of the world's second-largest rainforest.   Guest Fiona "Boo" Maisels is a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, while Andrew Davies is assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and they speak with host Mike DiGirolamo about these charismatic mammals.     Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.   If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!   See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates.   Image credit: A calf attempts to sneak its trunk into a mineral pit that mom is drinking from. Protest calls are often heard from calves in this behavioral context, as mom sometimes pushes them away and they in turn express their displeasure with a little yell. Photo Ana Verahrami, Elephant Listening Project.   --- Timecodes    (00:00) Introduction (02:00) There are two African elephant species? (06:06) Can the "value" of an elephant be quantified? (19:30) The value of forest bais (27:25) Impacts of climate change (30:30) The future of forest elephants in the Congo Basin (38:44) Credits

Listeners, please welcome Dr. Sheina Lew-Levy to the show! In this episode Prof. Lew-Levy discusses the importance of social learning among children to the study of evolution. Stick around for some gardening tips! Find the publication discussed in today's episode via these citations: Pretelli, Ilaria, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Edmond Dounias, Sagan Friant, Jeremy Koster, Karen L. Kramer, Shani M. Mangola, Almudena Mari Saez, and Sheina Lew‐Levy. "Child and adolescent foraging: New directions in evolutionary research." Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews (2023): e22020. Lew‐Levy, Sheina, Wouter van den Bos, Kathleen Corriveau, Natália Dutra, Emma Flynn, Eoin O'Sullivan, Sarah Pope‐Caldwell et al. "Peer learning and cultural evolution." Child Development Perspectives (2023). ------------------------------------------------------------ Using methods from anthropology and psychology, Prof. Lew-Levy conducts research in hunter-gatherer societies to understand the cultural diversity in, and evolution of, social learning in childhood. Specifically, Prof. Lew-Levy uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study how and from whom children learn through meaningful participation in every day activities. With Forager Child Studies, her interdisciplinary research team conducts cross-cultural reviews and secondary data analysis on the pasts, presents, and futures of forager children's learning. Since 2016, Prof. Lew-Levy has worked with egalitarian BaYaka foragers and their farmer neighbours in the Congo Basin. Her primary research uses behavioural observations to understand social learning. She can be contacted via e-mail: sheina.lew-levy at durham.ac.uk ----------------------------------------------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website: humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: cdlynn at ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer E-mail: eric.griffith at duke.edu

Very few places on our planet appear untouchedby humans, but in those that do, nature is still very much in charge – and the scenery is breathtaking. In the new BBC series Wilderness with Simon Reeve, journalist Simone Reeve takes us into the heart of Earth's last great wild areas, including the Congo Basin rainforest, Patagonia, the Coral Triangle and the Kalahari desert in Southern Africa.In this episode of CultureLab, TV columnist Bethan Ackerley asks Simon about the series and his many exciting expeditions, including meeting bonobos in the depths of the Congo and a “staggering experience” trekking up the South Patagonia icefield. We hear about his meetings with Indigenous peoples and what they can teach us about living more intune with nature. And we discover why now is the time to focus on Earth's wildernesses.To read about subjects like this and much more, visit newscientist.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Together, the United States and China import $40 billion worth of timber products each year, quite a bit of which is harvested illegally from West Africa's rapidly shrinking forests. But cracking down on this illicit trade is extremely difficult given that many of the region's governments are actively complicit. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an NGO based in the U.S. and UK, recently traced how Chinese merchants trafficked rosewood timber from the forests Equatorial Guinea back to China and eventually all the way to store shelves at Home Depot in the United States. Last year, EIA published their findings in a damning investigative report. Ma Haibing, an Asia policy specialist at EIA, was part of the team that worked on that report. He joins Eric & Cobus from Washington, D.C. to discuss the key findings and what he recommends can be done to crack down on this destructive trade. SHOW NOTES: EIA: The Dictator's Door -- From Crimes in Equatorial Guinea's Forests to Home Depot's Customers: https://bit.ly/3O4McDg The Hill: To halt global deforestation, start with the Home Depot by Raphael Edou: https://bit.ly/3HrCmYc JOIN THE DISCUSSION: X: @ChinaGSProject| @stadenesque| @eric_olander | @christiangeraud Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ChinaGlobalSouth FOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC: Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChine Arabic: عربي: www.akhbaralsin-africia.com | @AkhbarAlSinAfr JOIN US ON PATREON! Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug! www.patreon.com/chinaglobalsouth

Wongel Zelalem reports on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) auctioning rights to explore for oil in large swathes of rainforest and other protected areas across the country. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/africandiasporanews/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/africandiasporanews/support

This week we go on a captivating journey into the world of bonobos, our enigmatic primate cousins, on this special episode of the All Creatures Podcast. Delve into the incredible world of these remarkable apes, exploring their behavior, significance in the animal kingdom, and the critical conservation efforts to protect these endangered species. Episode Highlights: Meet the Bonobos: A brief introduction to the bonobos, the lesser-known species of great apes closely related to chimpanzees, emphasizing their unique characteristics, social structures, and habitat in the lush forests of the Congo Basin. Behavioral Insights: Detailed exploration of bonobo behavior, their matriarchal society, complex communication, problem-solving abilities, and their intriguing conflict-resolution methods. Dive into their emotional intelligence and societal norms that differentiate them from other primates. Threats to Bonobo Survival: Addressing the significant challenges faced by bonobos, including habitat loss due to deforestation, hunting, and the illegal pet trade. Highlighting the factors contributing to their vulnerable status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Conservation Efforts: Engaging discussions about various conservation initiatives and organizations working tirelessly to safeguard bonobos. Featuring interviews with leading primatologists, conservationists, and researchers actively involved in protecting these endangered apes. Highlighting successful conservation methods, community engagement, and the importance of preserving their habitat. The Role of Local Communities: Explore the critical role of local communities in bonobo conservation, emphasizing the significance of empowering and educating indigenous populations about the value of these primates and sustainable coexistence. Hope for the Future: Inspiring stories of successful conservation outcomes and positive strides in protecting bonobos. Discussing the potential for their recovery and the ongoing research contributing to a better understanding of their behavior and needs. How Listeners Can Help: Providing practical tips and suggestions for listeners to get involved in supporting bonobo conservation efforts, including donation opportunities, raising awareness, and advocating for policies that protect these remarkable apes. Another thank you to all our Patreon supporters. We now are hosting monthly Zoom meetings with them, answering questions and getting ideas on which species they want covered. You too can join for one cup of "good" coffee a month. With your pledge you can support your favorite podcast on Patreon and give back to conservation. With the funds we receive each month, we are have been sending money to conservation organizations monthly. We now send a check to every organization we cover, as we feel they all are deserving of our support. Thank you so much for your support and for supporting animal conservation.  Please considering supporting us at Patreon HERE. We also want to thank you to all our listeners. We are giving back to every conservation organization we cover and you make that possible. We are committed to donating large portions of our revenue (at minimum 25%) to every organization we cover each week. Thank you for helping us to grow, and for helping to conserve our wildlife. Please contact us at advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast You can also visit our website HERE.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A World Gorilla Day Special Exploring the Fate of the Colossal Grauer's GorillasSituated on the eastern edge of the expansive Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of Congo, GRACE  holds the unique distinction of being the world's sole sanctuary for Grauer's gorillas. The largest primates on our planet, yet the least known of the gorilla species, these giants are facing a dire crisis as their numbers have plummeted drastically over the past two decades. Only 6,800 individuals now remain. 'For every baby gorilla that comes to the sanctuary, we know the family was most likely killed.' In this episode of Talking Apes, GRACE's Programs Director, Katie Fawcett, reveals the  complexities of working in a region historically marred by devastating conflicts. The difficulty of reaching these remote gorilla territories has hampered research, conservation, and tourism efforts over the years, leaving these magnificent creatures teetering on the brink of extinction. 'GRACE lies at the start of the Congo Basin - I find that wildly exciting. But access to work in that area has been very challenging.' Can the elusive Grauer's endure the challenges of the next decade and beyond? There is hope. Throughout our conversation, Katie reveals the remarkable achievements of GRACE. Learn about their efforts in building trust with local communities and establishing a resilient Congolese team, all working toward a vision of sustainable community-led conservation. 'Our goal is to come out with a model of community led conservation - where the forests are protected, the gorillas are protected, and the people are benefitting.' - Dr Katie FawcettClick here to visit the GRACE website.Click here to see GRACE's 14 beautiful gorilla inhabitants. Click HERE to support our show with Talking Apes Merch. Support the showTalking Apes is an initiative of the nonprofit GLOBIO. Official website: talkingapes.orgInstagram: @talkingapes_podcastTwitter: @talking_apes Click here to support the show. BUY OUR MERCH

The Amazon rainforest absorbs one-fourth of all the carbon dioxide absorbed by the land of the Earth.  It is by far the world's largest rainforest, bigger than the next two largest – in the Congo Basin and Indonesia – combined.  Nearly two-thirds of it is found in Brazil but the more than 2 million square […]

Pangolins are small mammals with hard scales and vital to biodiversity in forrested regions. They are also the most trafficked mammal in the world.  Although they are a protected species in internatinal law, transnational organized criminal groups profit from trafficking Pangolins This includes the Congo Basin in Central Africa. International organized criminal groups run poaching and trafficking networks in which most poached pangolins are exported to China and Southeast asia, where they are a key ingrediant in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pangolin meat is considered a high-end delicacy.  According to my guest today Oluwole Ojewale these networks rake in millions and are a destabilizing force across several countries in the Central Africa. Oluwole Ojewale is the Regional Organized Crime Observatory Coordinator for Central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies. As he explains in our conversation Pangolin trafficking is part of a broader criminal network of illicit wildlife trafficking that funds armed groups, including terrorist groups active in the Central Africa.       

The Congo Basin in Central Africa is a critical biodiversity hotspot and linchpin in the fight against climate disruption. But will the world make good on its promises to protect biodiversity in the Congo and around the world? Also, the hit Netflix movie “Don't Look Up” uses humor and the metaphor of an impending, Earth-obliterating comet to satirize climate denial, the political obstacles to climate action and the false promises of future technological fixes. And in nature, some animals live far longer than humans, and some don't appear to age at all. One species of jellyfish can continually revert back to a juvenile stage, making it essentially immortal. Unlocking nature's secrets to longevity and how humans can live longer. -- We offer a full transcript for each show along with photos and links to learn more. Check it out at loe.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Israel's raid on the West Bank reignites fears of escalating violence, Switzerland is looking into potential Russian sanctions violations and we continue our series on the Congo Basin with David Pilling, the FT's Africa editor. Plus, meme stock traders shop for Bed Bath & Beyond.Mentioned in this podcast:Switzerland questions oil trader over sidestep of Russian sanctionsIn search of the ‘village of the elephants', deep in the central African rainforestEight injured after car rams pedestrians in Tel Aviv, say policeInvestors spend $200mn on ‘worthless' Bed Bath & Beyond sharesToday's FT News Briefing is produced by Manuela Saragosa, Fiona Symon and Josh Gabert-Doyon. Mixing by Simon Panayi. Additional help from Katie McMurran, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Topher Forhecz is the FT's executive producer. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show's theme song is by Metaphor Music. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Great apes are facing a concerning future. If humans neglect to address climate change, they could lose up to 94% of their range by 2050. In the Congo Basin, a stronghold for great ape species, several challenges pose significant threats to their survival; national interests in exploiting natural resources, security issues in areas like the Albertine Rift, hunting activities, and the illegal wildlife trade all contribute to the severe predicament faced by these charismatic mammals. In this episode of Mongabay Explores, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Kirsty Graham, Terese Hart, and Sally Coxe shed light on threats to bonobos and mountain gorillas, provide insight from their years of experience working with them, and discuss the pivotal role played by great apes in safeguarding the Congo Basin rainforest. Listen to the other episodes in this Congo Basin season of Mongabay Explores: Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin: The ‘heart of the world' is at a turning point Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation' fight for a way back in Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips. If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps! See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find and follow Mongabay on all the social media platforms. Image Caption: Bonobos live in more peaceful societies than their two close relatives, chimpanzees and humans. Photo courtesy of Jutta Hof. Please share your thoughts and feedback! submissions@mongabay.com

Since the colonization of the Congo Basin by Europeans, many Indigenous communities have been denied land they once relied on in the name of conservation under a contentious conservation model. The central concept of “fortress conservation” remains popular with some Central African governments, however experts say it is based on a false premise of a "pristine wilderness" devoid of humans. However, Indigenous leaders and conservation experts say it's time for a change. One that includes Indigenous communities and puts them in the drives seat of conservation initiatives. On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, Cameroonian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner Samuel Nguiffo, Congolese academic Vedaste Cituli, and Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo detail the troubling history of fortress conservation in Central Africa, its impact, and ways to address the problems it has created. For more Congo exploration coming soon, find & follow/subscribe to Mongabay Explores via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. Please also enjoy the first three seasons of Explores, where we dove into the huge biodiversity and conservation challenges in Sumatra, New Guinea, and more.  Episode Artwork: Kahuzi-Biega National Park rangers standing in formation in the park in October 2016, by Thomas Nicolon for Mongabay. Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama. Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!  See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for Mongabay.

The Congo Basin contains the world's second-largest rainforest at a staggering 178 million hectares (just under 440 million acres). It is also one of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet, containing 29 billion metric tons of carbon in its vast peatlands under the rich forest. One of the basin's key countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), aims to open up protected areas and forested peatlands to oil and gas development, with many experts warning of dire consequences to the rainforest and the world's climate, should these peatlands be disturbed. Sound familiar? On the heels of our Guyana season, we wanted to bring you this deep dive from the great folks over at MongaBay on what's happening in the Congo right now. You can find the MongaBay Explores podcast here and MongaBay's regular Newscast here. Check them out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're sharing the first episode of a new season of Mongabay Explores, a deep dive into the Congo Basin which begins with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which contains 60% of central Africa's forest, but which also aims to open up protected areas and forested peatlands to oil and gas development.  This is big because the Congo Basin contains the world's second-largest rainforest, a staggering 178 million hectares, containing myriad wildlife and giant trees plus numerous human communities: it is also one of the world's biggest carbon sinks.  We speak with Adams Cassinga, a DRC resident and founder of Conserv Congo, and Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, about the environmental and conservation challenges and opportunities faced by the DRC & the Congo Basin in general.  For more Congo exploration coming on episode 2, find & follow/subscribe to Mongabay Explores via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. Until episode 2 airs, please also enjoy the first three seasons of Explores, where we dove into the huge biodiversity and conservation challenges in Sumatra, New Guinea, and more.  Episode Artwork: A female putty-nosed monkey. Image by C. Kolopp / WCS. Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama. Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!  See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for Mongabay. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.

Richard Syrett and documentary filmmaker Alex Brecher discuss hunting an elusive cryptid in the harsh and lawless Congo Basin of Central Africa.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's episode, we get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to film a wildlife conservation documentary. Part 1: Documentary producer Mariah Wilson is days into making her film about the endangered Forest Elephant and still hasn't seen one. Part 2: Science Journalist Katherine J. Wu interviews Mariah Wilson to learn more about the stars of her documentary Silent Forests. Mariah Wilson is a documentary producer and director with a focus on wildlife conservation whose work has taken her to six continents. She has worked on series for PBS, Amazon, Netflix, National Geographic, Vice, A&E, Al Jazeera, History, Mongabay, Discovery, Animal Planet, and more. Her 2019 feature documentary SILENT FORESTS is about the fight to save forest elephants from ivory trafficking in Africa's Congo Basin. It screened at Santa Barbara, Big Sky (Finalist – Feature Competition), Brooklyn Film Festival (Spirit Award), Jackson Wild WWD (Winner – Stories of Hope) and is a One World Media Award Winner. Mariah's other producing credits include MADINA'S DREAM (SXSW, Telluride Mountainfilm), MARY JANES (Woodstock, Mill Valley), END OF THE LINE (DOC NYC), and most recently the Amazon Studios film WILDCAT (Sundance Doc Fund, Telluride, AFI, IDFA, National Board of Review Top 5 Documentaries of 2022) Mariah is passionate about illuminating the myriad intersections between humans and animals, and celebrating those dedicated to protecting wildlife. She is a proud Jackson Wild Summit Fellow (2021) and Explorer's Club Fellow. More at: www.mariahewilson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Your hosts Dr. Dean Bertram and Jason McLean continue to lurk in the audio-visual wing of the Mysterious Library. This week they check out THE EXPLORER, a brand-new documentary from Alexandre Brecher. This stunning documentary takes us to the darkest heart of the Congo Basin. There, accompanying cryptozoologist Michel Ballot, we search for Africa's most famous cryptid: The Mokele-mbembe, an alleged giant reptile or sauropod dinosaur (think brontosaurus), that has been reported to stalk the region's rivers, swamps, and jungles for hundreds of years.

Jane Goodall is on a mission to protect habitat worldwide by empowering local communities to develop sustainably. And it all started when she was just ten years old and dreamed of studying wild animals in Africa. Also, a massive new oil drilling project in the Arctic just got the green light from President Biden despite his promises for no new drilling on federal lands. And the Congo Basin in Central Africa is a critical biodiversity hotspot and linchpin in the fight against climate disruption. But will the world make good on its promise to protect biodiversity in the Congo and around the world? -- You're invited to the next Living on Earth Book Club event! We'll talk with “The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration” author Jake Bittle on March 23rd at 3 p.m. Eastern. Learn more and sign up at loe.org/events!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Critically endangered elephants in the Congo Basin play a key role in creating forests, which in turn, store carbon and maintain the biodiversity of African rainforests. If the species becomes extinct, the second largest rainforest on earth would lose between six and nine percent of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon — that's according to researcher Stephen Blake, an associate professor of biology at St. Louis University.

Can playing board games help us fix real-world problems? All around the world, people play board games for fun. But in recent years, a new generation of designers have been creating games with a social purpose - to enable understanding about complex problems like climate change, inequality and deforestation, and collaboratively design strategies to solve them. We look at how a group of researchers from Switzerland are creating custom-made board games that help resolve environmental disputes, led by Professor Claude Garcia from ETH Zurich and Bern University of Applied Sciences. Local farmers, businesspeople and government officials play their own roles in the games – which have helped them find compromises that protect the natural world in Indonesia and the Congo Basin. And in London, we also get a first-look at Daybreak, a new collaborative board game designed by Matteo Menapace and Matt Leacock, who designed Pandemic - a game that helped people understand the spread of coronavirus. In Daybreak, they've used the best scientific advice to design a game where you work together to try to stop climate change in its tracks. Presenter: Myra Anubi Reporters: Lizzy McNeill and Zoe Gelber Producers: Zoe Gelber, William Kremer and Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: Hal Haines Editor: Penny Murphy Email: peoplefixingtheworld@bbc.co.uk Image: The Daybreak board game

Matt and Nick talk about what can we expect from the end of COP27 today (COP27 Climate Talks Inch Toward 'Loss And Damage' Showdown | Barron's (barrons.com)),2022's record-breaking pace for global carbon emissions (Data Shows Carbon Dioxide Emissions Likely to Reach Record High in 2022 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)),A new Washington state law for heat pumps instead of furnaces in all new homes (New dwellings in Washington state must be warmed by heat pumps, rather than furnaces, beginning in July, state board rules Friday | The Spokesman-Review),Deforestation in the Congo Basin (The next Amazon? Congo Basin faces rising deforestation threat | Context),And France requiring solar canopies for all large parking lots (France to require all large parking lots to be covered by solar panels (electrek.co))!Make sure to check out our sponsor for today's episode at Vala Alta and use promo code “TPT” for 15% off.

The Congo Basin is home to the world's largest peatland. Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at UCL and the University of Leeds, tells Roland how peatlands all around the world are showing early alarm bells of change. From the boreal Arctic forests to the Amazon, Simon helps us understand how they could action huge change in the climate. Simon is joined by Dr Ifo Averti, Associate Professor in Forest Ecology at Universite Marien Ngouabi in the Congo who helps us understand what this landscape is like. Hurricane Ian, which recently caused devastating damage to Cuba and the United States, may signify a growing trend of increasingly powerful storms. Karthik Balaguru, climate and data scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, explains how climate change is causing hurricanes to rapidly intensify, making them faster and wetter. On Sunday 6th November, COP27 will begin in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Dr Debbie Rosen, Science and Policy Manager at CONSTRAIN, breaks down some of the jargon we might hear throughout the conference. We know the Earth's atmosphere is warming and it's thanks to us and our taste for fossil fuels. But how quickly is this melting the ice sheets, ice caps, and glaciers that remain on our planet? That's what listener David wants to know. With the help of a team of climate scientists in Greenland, Marnie Chesterton goes to find the answer, in an icy landscape that's ground zero in the story of thawing. She discovers how Greenland's ice sheet is sliding faster off land, and sees that the tiniest of creatures are darkening the ice surface and accelerating its melt. CrowdScience explores what we're in store for when it comes to melting ice. In the lead-up to yet another UN climate conference, we unpack what is contributing to sea level rise – from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, to melting mountain glaciers and warming oceans. There's a lot of ice at the poles. The question is: how much of it will still be there in the future? Research Professor and climate scientist Jason Box from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland shows us how much ice Greenland we've already committed ourselves to losing, even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels today. His team, including Jakob Jakobsen, show us how these scientists collect all this data that helps feed climate models and helps us all to understand how quickly the seas might rise. Professor Martyn Trantor from Aarhus University helps us understand why a darkening Greenland ice sheet would only add to the problem of melting. And climate scientist Ruth Mottram from the Danish Meteorological Institute breaks down how the ice is breaking down in Antarctica and other glaciers around the world. Image credit: Getty Images

The Congo Basin is home to the world's largest peatland. Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at UCL and the University of Leeds, tells Roland how this peatland acts as a huge carbon sink and how climate change could result in these carbon stores being released. He is joined by Dr Ifo Averti, Associate Professor in Forest Ecology at Universite Marien Ngouabi in the Congo who helps us understand what this landscape is like. We'll explore how peatlands all around the world are showing early alarm bells of change. From the boreal Arctic forests to the Amazon, Simon helps us understand how they could action huge change in the climate. Hurricane Ian, which recently caused devastating damage to Cuba and the United States, may signify a growing trend of increasingly powerful storms. Karthik Balaguru, climate and data scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, explains how climate change is causing hurricanes to rapidly intensify, making them faster and wetter. On Sunday 6th November, COP27 will begin in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Dr Debbie Rosen, Science and Policy Manager at CONSTRAIN, breaks down some of the jargon we might hear throughout the conference. Contributors Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science, University College London & University of Leeds Dr Ifo Averti, Associate Professor in Forest Ecology at Universite Marien Ngouabi Karthik Balaguru, Climate and Data Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Dr Debbie Rosen, Science and Policy Manager, CONSTRAIN Image credit: Getty Images Presenter: Roland Pease Assistant Producer: Sophie Ormiston Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski

After two years of civil war - and eight days of AU-mediated talks in South Africa - the Ethiopian federal government and Tigrayan authorities have signed a cessation of hostilities agreement. But what's in the deal, and will this be the end of the war, which also - notoriously - includes Eritrea? Also in the programme: the world's largest tropical peatlands in the Congo Basin may be approaching a tipping point where they flip from being a major carbon store to a major carbon emitter; and how could the new far right element in Benjamin Netanyahu's expected next coalition affect Israel's policies at home - and the country's standing abroad? (Photo: Ethiopian government representative Redwan Hussien and Tigraany delegate Getachew Reda pass documents during the signing of the AU-led negotiations to resolve the conflict in northern Ethiopia, in Pretoria , South Africa, November 2, 2022 / Credit: REUTERS / Siphiwe Sibeko)

Good Monday everyone, this is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Monday, August 15th, 2022. FLF Conference Plug: Folks, our upcoming Fight Laugh Feast Conference is just 2-months away from happening in Knoxville TN, October 6-8! Don't miss beer & psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers which includes George Gilder, Jared Longshore, Pastor Wilson, Dr. Ben Merkle, Pastor Toby, and we can’t say yet…also dont miss our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and stuff for the kids too…like jumpy castles and accidental infant baptisms! Also, did you know, you can save money, by signing up for a Club Membership. So, go to FightLaughFeast.com and sign up for a club membership and then register for the conference with that club discount. We can’t wait to fellowship, sing Psalms, and celebrate God’s goodness in Knoxville October 6-8. Now, here’s what you may have missed over the weekend: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/idaho-supreme-court-abortion-bans-will-be-allowed-challenges Idaho Supreme Court: Abortion bans will be allowed to take effect amid challenges The Idaho Supreme Court ruled Friday that strict abortion bans will be allowed to take effect. The ruling comes as legal challenges over the laws continue and the court sped up the timeline for lawsuits to be decided. Two justices agreed with expediting the cases, but noted that they felt laws should not be enforced until the legal process has been completed. A doctor and a regional Planned Parenthood sued Idaho over three anti-abortion laws. The Justice Department is also suing Idaho in federal court over a near-total abortion ban; the judge has not yet ruled in that case. The state Supreme Court's ruling means that potential relatives of an embryo or fetus can now sue abortion providers over procedures done after six weeks of gestation and another stricter ban criminalizing all abortions is slated for later in August. Potential relatives can sue for up to $20,000 within four years of an abortion. On Aug. 25, per the Idaho Supreme Court's decision, a near-total criminalizing of all abortions – still allowing doctors to defend themselves at trial by claiming the abortion was done to save the pregnant person’s life – will take effect. Planned Parenthood has also sued over a third ban that criminalizes abortions done after six weeks of gestation except in cases where it was needed to save a pregnant person’s life or done because of rape or incest. That law was written to take effect on Aug. 19. The Supreme Court said the plaintiffs both failed to show that allowing enforcement of the laws would cause "irreparable harm" and that there was not enough evidence that they had a "clear right" to a remedy. This ruling comes as other states face similar challenges following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. In nearby Wyoming, a judge blocked the state's near-total ban on Wednesday. The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday denied an appeal filed by plaintiffs, allowing the ban there to stay in effect. In Kansas, the elections director said the state would go along with a request for a hand recount of votes from every county after last week's decisive statewide vote affirming abortion rights. https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2022/08/13/monkeypox-is-getting-a-new-name-because-the-who-says-the-name-is-racist-n489435 Monkeypox is getting a new name because the WHO says the name is racist Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, met with scientists this week to discuss best naming practices for diseases. The focus is to avoid offending any “ethnic, social, or professional groups and minimize harm to trade, travel, tourism, or animals.” Monkeypox is at the top of the agenda to receive a new name. Two clades (variants) of the disease have already been given new names. The WHO released a statement on Friday announcing the new names of two variants of monkeypox. Using Roman numerals instead of geographic areas, the Congo Basin variant is now Clade one or 1 and the West Africa clade is Clade two or II. This is to avoid stigmatization. Is all of this political correctness run amok? It looks like it. Who are they afraid of offending? Monkeys? Africans from the Congo or West Africa? Other diseases are named using geographic locations and they aren’t being renamed. It’s like the coronavirus that came from Wuhan, China. No one was supposed to call it the Wuhan virus because it might offend Communist Chinese leaders. Monkeypox has been around since 1958. The world’s population has managed to live with that name since then. It was a commonsense name at the time – research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a pox-like disease. Monkeys are not thought to be the animal reservoir. Now that it is spreading globally and health experts are beginning to panic, calling it a health emergency, suddenly the virus needs a new name. The WHO declared the disease an international emergency in July. The U.S. declared its epidemic a national emergency this month. Before that, back in May, Sleepy Joe was pushing the panic button and telling Americans that “everybody” should be concerned about monkeypox. The first human case of monkeypox was reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, thus the name of that variant. The WHO is now reporting that it held an open forum to discuss a name change for the disease after a group of 30 scientists from Africa warned of an “urgent need” to change the name. It has a stigmatizing potential, they said. The virus has been reported in several other African countries and abroad. The Western outbreak began in May in the U.K., Portugal, and Spain. It has spread to the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany. Scientists are concerned about racist connotations and also stigma for the LGBTQ community. There have also been attacks on and poisoning of monkeys. I think there is an urgent need to alert gay men of how monkeypox spreads. Outside of Africa, 98% of cases are men who have sex with men. There is a limited global supply of vaccines. Health officials are rushing to stop monkeypox from becoming entrenched as a new disease. There’s been a lot of tippy-toeing around that fact out of fear of offending gay men. It isn’t exclusively gay men, it’s also bisexual men who have sex with women. Anyone can get it. Even children can get monkeypox from skin-to-skin contact. It is, however, stoppable. Scientists know how it is spread and how to stop it. If Team Biden has declared monkeypox a national emergency, why hasn’t he ramped up vaccine production. There’s a shortage. The longer the virus hangs around and spreads, the more likely it produces variants, like what happened during the coronavirus pandemic. It gets more contagious. The Biden administration continues to prove how inept it is in dealing with emergencies. Where are the public service announcements targeting the communities most at risk? Biden seems to be asleep at the wheel once again. Call the virus anything they want, more education and outreach is needed. Treat it like other STDs. Don’t ignore it and hope it goes away. Name changes are just window dressing, politically correct window dressing. Boniface Woodworking LLC: Boniface Woodworking exists for those who enjoy shopping with integrity; who want to buy handmade wooden furniture, gifts, and heirloom items that will last for generations. From dining tables and church pulpits to cigar humidors and everything in between; quality pieces that you can give your children’s children, tie them to their roots, and transcend the basic function of whatever they are! So, start voting with your dollars, and stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you! Visit www.bonifacewoodworking.com to see our gallery, learn our story, and submit your order for heirloom quality wood items. https://thepostmillennial.com/seattle-hospital-over-130-percent-capacity-no-longer-admitting-non-emergency-patients?utm_campaign=64487 Seattle hospital over 130 percent capacity, no longer admitting non-emergency patients Harborview Medical Center in Seattle announced Thursday that the facility is over capacity by approximately 150 patients, and will have to temporarily stop admitting patients with less acute conditions, diverting people to other facilities for treatment. The hospital’s licensed capacity is 413 but has more than 560 inpatients, meaning that capacity is over 130 percent. Other area hospitals report ready and willing to work with the medical center which all said they could "surge" to accommodate additional patients. According to a release from the hospital, there are also over 100 patients who are waiting to be discharged. Harborview CEO Sommer Kleweno Walley said, "Given the unique position Harborview has in the community as the level 1 trauma center, as the disaster center, and here for all critical illness, we had to make a very difficult decision today - one that has been weighing on our minds as UW Medicine leadership." "In order to ensure that we maintain our critical capacity for any type of trauma that is needed in our region and for any type of critical illness, we have moved to going on what we call 'basic life support divert.' Patients not in need of more urgent care will be needed to be taken care of and brought by ambulances to other hospitals surrounding Harborview in the area. Harborview for this time period will no longer be able to take care of the less acute patients in order to maintain our capacity." "In order to ensure that we maintain our critical capacity for any type of trauma that is needed in our region and for any type of critical illness, we have moved to going on what we call basic life support divert," Walley said. Dr. Steve Mitchell, acting medical director of Harborview Medical Center, said "What has been happening is that when ambulances arrive at Emergency Departments, they are unable to offload patients into beds inside the Emergency Department and they're having to wait for longer and longer periods of time, sometimes for hours, which is then impacting their ability to serve their communities for emergencies when they occur." According to an internal email obtained by the Postmillenial: "Harborview is currently at 130% capacity. Factors include the lack of staffing at nursing/rehab facilities that would normally receive patients needing that level of care. That is creating a backlog of patients in the emergency department, impacting Harborview’s ability to receive additional non-critical patients." Medical facilities in Washington state have been suffering from a staffing crisis following a Covid vaccine mandate that was enacted by Democrat Governor Jay Inslee for state and hospital workers. Earlier this week, the Yakima Board of Health sent a letter to Inslee asking him to rescind the vaccine mandate. County Commissioner Amanda McKinney criticized Proclamation 21-14.5, which requires employees, volunteers, and contractors for state agencies, schools, and health care organizations to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Last Friday, Inslee removed the requirement for boosters but left the vaccine mandate in place following negotiations with labor unions. According to a survey conducted by the Washington State Hospital Association this year, hospitals in the state suffered a net loss of about $929 million in the first three months of 2022, due in part to high inflation and labor shortages, which have resulted in labor, drug and supply cost increasing faster than payment rates. https://nypost.com/2022/08/12/fernando-tatis-jr-suspended-80-games-for-violating-mlb-ped-policy/ Fernando Tatis Jr. suspended 80 games for violating MLB PED policy The Padres will be without Fernando Tatis Jr. for the rest of the season. Tatis Jr. tested positive for Clostebol, and will be suspended for 80 games. The news of the suspension was first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan. “I’ve been informed by Major League Baseball that a test sample I submitted returned a positive result for Clostebol, a banned substance,” Tatis Jr. said in a statement, through the MLBPA. “It turns out that I inadvertently took a medication to treat ringworm that contained Clostebol. I should have used the resources available to me in order to ensure that no banned substances were in what I took. I failed to do so. “I want to apologize to Peter, AJ, the entire Padres organization, my teammates, Major League Baseball, and fans everywhere for my mistake. I have no excuse for my error, and I would never do anything to cheat or disrespect the game I love.” The 23-year-old phenom had missed the entire season due to a fractured wrist but had been expected to return soon. This is a blow to the Padres, who went all in trading a haul of highly-ranked prospects to the Nationals for superstar outfielder Juan Soto and formidable first baseman Josh Bell. The Padres are 63-51. While they trail the Dodgers by 16 games in the NL West, they would qualify for the postseason as a Wild Card team if the playoffs started today. Tatis Jr. signed a 14-year, $340 million contract with the Padres last February. This has been your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. If you liked the show, hit that share button down below. If you wanted to sign up for our conference, sign up for a club membership, or sign up for a magazine subscription, you can do all of that at fightlaughfeast.com. And as always, if you’d like to send me a news story, ask about our conference, or become a corporate partner of CrossPolitic, email me, at garrison@fightlaughfeast.com. For CrossPolitic News, I’m Garrison Hardie. Have a great day, and Lord bless.

On a multi-country tour of Africa this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been making the case that the U.S. can be a quote "equal partner" with African nations. In that vein, he recently announced a new partnership between the U.S. and the Democratic Republic of Congo in an effort to protect some of that nation's natural treasures. William Brangham reports. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

A few years back, 99pi producer Emmett FitzGerald brought us a beautiful story about peat bogs. Peat is essential for biodiversity and for the climate – it is really, really good at storing carbon. But like a lot of things we cover on the show, peat often goes unnoticed, in part because it is literally out of sight underground. We've  noticed peat and carbon sequestration more and more in the news lately. Journalists have been brilliantly covering stories about the tree planting movement, private ownership of Scotland's bogs, and the threat to peat in the Congo Basin. Couple that with more extreme weather happening in more places, we thought it would be a good idea to repeat this story.For the Love of Peat

The peatlands of Africa's Congo Basin are a vast expanse of swamp and greenery that act as one of the world's most effective carbon sinks -- and they're under threat of environmental destruction. Economist Vera Songwe explains how putting a price on the carbon stored in the peatlands would not only help protect this vital resource but also recognize and reward the African communities that have contributed little to climate change. "This is not just about decarbonization," Songwe says. "This is also about development with dignity."

The peatlands of Africa's Congo Basin are a vast expanse of swamp and greenery that act as one of the world's most effective carbon sinks -- and they're under threat of environmental destruction. Economist Vera Songwe explains how putting a price on the carbon stored in the peatlands would not only help protect this vital resource but also recognize and reward the African communities that have contributed little to climate change. "This is not just about decarbonization," Songwe says. "This is also about development with dignity."