African forests are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they absorb, a fundamental shift that will make it more difficult for the world to cut its net emissions to zero. Forests and shrubby woodlands on the continent have previously been one of the world’s biggest carbon sinks, accounting for 20 per cent of all the CO2 taken up by plants. The lion’s share of this is in the Congo rainforest, the second largest in the world after the Amazon. Sometimes called the “lungs of Africa”, it absorbs an estimated 600 million tonnes of CO2 per year. However, that number has been falling as the rainforest is destroyed by logging and mining.
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