The area of land given over to oil and gas extraction in Africa is set to quadruple, threatening to wipe out a third of the dense tropical forests in the Congo basin and accelerate the climate breakdown, a report warns.
Almost 10% of the African continent is already covered by oil and gas production fields, but this could expand to almost 38% if proposals for new projects get the go-ahead – unleashing a huge carbon bomb into the atmosphere that would severely undermine global climate action, according to mapping and analysis by Rainforest Foundation UK and Earth Insight.
