Africa’s rainforests continue to breathe for the global community, thanks to the continent’s favourable climate, lush vegetation, and ever-enthusiastic population. Despite holding one of the planet’s last intact tropical forest systems, the Congo Basin rarely receives the spotlight or financing it deserves. That’s why Gabon’s new agreement, “Gabon Infini”, a $150 million 10-year partnership between the Gabonese government and a coalition of donors like the Bezos Earth Fund and the Global Environment Facility, feels monumental. It’s not just a funding deal; it’s an economic, environmental, and political reset for a country that holds climate importance far beyond its size.
With 34,000 square kilometres of rainforest now earmarked for enhanced protection, an area roughly the size of Belgium, Gabon is doubling down on a climate leadership role it has been quietly building for two decades. In doing so, it is reshaping the way conservation finance operates in Africa.
READ ALSO: Inside the 2025 Climate Yearbook: Africa’s Rise in Global Funding
Gabon Infini is a $180 million conservation initiative funded through a blend of $94 million from global donors and $86 million from the Gabonese government. It follows the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) model, which ensures that funding is released gradually and only when specific conservation and governance milestones are met. This approach prioritises long-term sustainability, making the financial support conditional on policy reforms and performance, rather than functioning as traditional aid.
The program aims to significantly strengthen Gabon’s environmental protection framework by expanding national parks, scaling protected forest coverage from 15% to 30%, and intensifying efforts against elephant poaching. It also seeks to grow Gabon’s ecotourism sector, support community forestry, enhance rural livelihoods, and invest in scientific research, an area critically underfunded in the Congo Basin. Together, these components position Gabon Infini as a transformative, results-driven blueprint for conservation in Central Africa.
This arrives at a pivotal moment, as the country faces mounting economic strain from rising government expenditures, a projected debt-to-GDP increase to nearly 90%, declining oil production, and climate-related risks that could cut 3.5% to 5.3% of GDP annually by 2050. Against this backdrop, the initiative provides a decade of stable conservation financing, reinforces Gabon’s climate leadership after the 2023 coup, and supports its transition toward a post-oil green economy. Crucially, it also opens new revenue pathways through carbon markets and ecotourism, making the timing both economically and politically strategic.
The Congo Basin, Earth’s second-largest rainforest and a critical carbon sink absorbing 600 million tons of CO₂ annually, remains vastly underfunded and understudied despite its global importance. Home to 10,000 plant species, one-third of which are found nowhere else, and vital to sustaining water systems from the Sahel to the Nile, it received only $3.2 billion in global rainforest funding between 2008 and 2022, compared to $9.3 billion for the Amazon and $7.4 billion for Southeast Asia. With just 2,000 academic studies and a mere 0.1% of funding directed toward research, the region suffers from a deep knowledge deficit. Gabon Infini directly challenges this neglect by channelling long-term financing not only into conservation but also into strengthening scientific research, an essential step toward elevating the Congo Basin’s place in global climate strategy.
Although Gabon is one of the world’s rare carbon-negative nations, it remains highly vulnerable to climate change, with temperatures expected to rise between 0.9°C and 2.5°C by 2050, and potentially up to 4°C by 2100, bringing more intense heatwaves. Rainfall patterns are projected to shift toward heavier downpours, heightening the risk of severe urban flooding, while sea-level rise threatens coastal cities such as Libreville and Port-Gentil, where 75% of the population lives in low-lying zones. These combined pressures carry major economic consequences, with climate impacts projected to shave 3.5% to 5.3% off Gabon’s GDP by 2050.
This landscape is built on strong foundations, robust environmental laws, effective anti-poaching systems, largely intact forest cover, active participation in carbon markets, and deep partnerships with global institutions like CAFI and the GEF. Yet the country faces growing pressures, including rising deforestation from palm oil expansion and logging, fiscal strain that threatens conservation budgets, a shortage of local climate scientists, and governance uncertainties in the post-coup period. The Gabon Infini initiative is designed to confront these vulnerabilities head-on, reinforcing the nation’s strengths while securing long-term environmental and institutional stability.
Gabon’s conservation leadership is the result of deliberate, long-term policies dating back to the early 2000s, including the creation of 13 national parks in 2002, a $500 million debt-for-nature swap in 2023, and pioneering participation in the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) as the first African country to receive payments for verified emission reductions. Maintaining the lowest deforestation rate in the Congo Basin, Gabon’s forests cover 85–90% of its land and absorb 140 million tons of CO₂ annually, providing critical habitat for forest elephants and chimpanzees, and positioning the country as a rare, globally significant carbon sink.
There are several market challenges and headwinds in implementing Gabon Infini. The Project Finance for Permanence model, while effective, is rigid, meaning funding can be delayed if policy benchmarks are not met. The country remains heavily dependent on oil, which accounts for 63% of CO₂ emissions and 60% of export earnings, slowing the transition to a green economy. Additionally, the Congo Basin receives less global attention than the Amazon, limiting fundraising opportunities, while regional security concerns and conflicts in neighbouring countries like the DRC, CAR, and Cameroon complicate cross-border conservation and environmental management.
Globally, Gabon may manage a smaller area under its PFP deal compared to Brazil’s 243,000 sq km Amazon agreement, but it outperforms in forest integrity, maintaining far lower deforestation rates and largely intact ecosystems. Compared to Kenya and Namibia, Gabon leads in carbon markets, mature forest policies, and biodiversity protection, though it lags in tourism infrastructure and economic diversification. Within Africa, Gabon stands out as a model for high forest cover, carbon-negativity, low deforestation, and science-driven conservation, setting a benchmark for sustainable forest management across the continent.
Infini has far-reaching implications for both Africa and the world. For Africa, it demonstrates that the continent’s natural capital is bankable, potentially catalysing African-led conservation finance systems, green bonds, community-driven ecotourism, and stronger negotiating power in global climate forums, while enabling Congo Basin nations to claim fair compensation for their carbon services. Globally, the initiative reinforces the Congo Basin as a critical carbon sink, helps offset declining absorption in the Amazon, and serves as a long-term test case for scalable, results-driven Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) models in rainforest conservation.
This opens multiple future opportunities, from an ecotourism renaissance modelled on Rwanda’s high-value, low-impact approach to strengthening Gabon’s leadership in carbon credits, including verified, biodiversity, and blue carbon markets. It also supports green industrialisation, with potential growth in sustainable timber processing, climate-resilient agriculture, nature-based employment, and conservation technology like drones and remote sensing. Additionally, the initiative aims to build scientific capacity, training over 1,000 African PhD-level scientists to advance climate research and biodiversity management in the Congo Basin.
Gabon Infini is more than a conservation deal. It is a statement: Africa’s forests are not charity cases; they are global stabilisers, and their stewards deserve global investment.
For Gabon, the agreement arrives at a moment of economic pressure but environmental opportunity. For Africa, it signals a shift toward valuing natural capital as a core economic asset. And for the world, it reinforces that our climate future depends on places that rarely make the headlines but quietly keep the Earth breathing.
Gabon is stepping into a larger role, one that is ecological, geopolitical, and deeply African. And with Gabon Infini, that role is finally being financed with the scale it deserves.
