DR Congo in shortlist for losing most primary forest

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been named as one of the countries which lost the most primary rainforest in the world in 2019.

The DRC lost 475,000 hectares of forest, second only to Brazil, which lost more than a million hectares of forest in the Amazon, according to Global Forest Watch.

The report said that most of the primary forest loss in the DRC "still appears to be in cyclical agriculture areas which typically feed local populations, but there is emerging evidence that some may be tied to large-scale commercial logging, mining and plantations".

The country houses part of the huge Congo Basin which includes the precious primary - or virgin - rainforest.

These extremely old tress hold huge stores of carbon locked away which is released into the atmosphere when they are burned.