Gabon: Rainforest, Oil and One of Africa's Greatest Conservation Stories
🌐 Translate:
Gabon is roughly 85 percent rainforest — one of the highest forest cover percentages of any country on earth — and has used its oil wealth to protect rather than exploit that forest. In 2002, President Omar Bongo created thirteen national parks covering roughly 11 percent of the country's total area, the largest network of protected areas in Central Africa. Lope National Park, the oldest, is UNESCO World Heritage and contains one of Africa's most significant populations of western lowland gorillas, forest elephants, and mandrills.
The Congo Basin rainforest that covers much of Gabon is the second largest tropical rainforest on earth and one of the planet's most important carbon stores. Gabon has positioned itself internationally as a climate champion — the forests absorb more carbon than Gabon's oil economy emits — and has received payments under international carbon credit schemes in recognition. The economic logic of conservation, in Gabon's case, has aligned with the environmental one.
Libreville, the capital, has a name that reflects its history: it was founded as a settlement for freed slaves in 1849, following the French Navy's interception of a slaving ship. The freed people settled at the mouth of the Gabon Estuary and the city grew around them. Unlike most African capitals, Libreville's founding story is one of liberation rather than colonial administration, though the colonial structures that followed reshaped it comprehensively.
