It’s larger than New York State and contains more than 30 billion tonnes of carbon – equivalent to 3 years of global fossil fuel emissions
In the heart of the Congo Basin lies the Cuvette Centrale, a vast wetland landscape of swamp forests, rivers, seasonally flooded grasslands and peatlands spanning parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of the Congo.
One of the world’s most important ecosystems for storing carbon, this remote region remains relatively unexplored with limited infrastructure.
What is the Cuvette Centrale?
The name Cuvette Centrale means ‘central depression’, referring to the broad, low-lying basin of wetlands in the centre of the Congo Basin. The Congo River and its tributaries drain this enormous region, creating extensive areas of permanently or seasonally waterlogged forest. The discovery that much of this swamp forest sits on deep peat transformed scientists’ understanding of the area.
Research published in Nature in 2017 estimated that the peatlands covered around 145,500 sq km, making it the largest tropical peatland complex in the world. More recent mapping in 2023 found that the peatland area was even larger at around 167,600 s...