The Democratic Republic of the Congo is planning to auction oil and gas permits in critically endangered gorilla habitat and the world’s largest tropical peatlands. The sale raises serious concerns about the credibility of a forest protection deal signed with the DRC by Boris Johnson at Cop26.

The DRC's hydrocarbons minister Didier Budimbu said the DRC was expanding an auction of oil exploration blocks to include two sites that overlap with Virunga national park, a Unesco world heritage site and the last refuge to the planet's last remaining mountain gorillas with a population of just 1000.

The planned sale includes permits in the Cuvette Centrale tropical peatlands in the north-west of the country, which store the equivalent of three years’ global emissions from fossil fuels.

The Congo basin is known to be the only remaining major rainforest that sucks in more carbon than it emits and experts have described it as the worst place in the world to explore for fossil fuels.

According to The Guardian, Irene Wabiwa, international project lead for the Congo forest campaign at Greenpeace Africa, said the auction made a mockery of DRC’s efforts to position itself as a solutions country for the climate crisis.

“The neocolonial and ever-growing scramble for oil and gas in DRC, which now threatens the Virunga national park, in addition to water sources, peatlands and protected areas, is an eerie example of the unhinged obsession to monetise nature,” she said.

Simon Lewis, professor of global change science at University College London and a global expert on the DRC’s peatlands, said the Congo basin was the worst place in the world to explore for oil and gas.

“Opening these forests to oil development will lead to hunting, deforestation, oil pollution, carbon emissions and social conflict. The oil auction is an auction to begin a wildlife, health, climate and human rights catastrophe,” he said.

In an era of rising global temperatures, the joint threat of climate and ecological crises threatening everything we know and love, we have to make a stand against the relentless pursuit of profit over people and planet. We have the means and technology to create a greener more sustainable future, so why, when the signs of imminent catastrophe are so clear, do we  allow multi national corporations to wreak havoc on our planet.