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Figure 17.
Percentage of the area of eastern gorilla, bonobo and common chimpanzee
ranges of occurrence and IBAs within designated and proposed protected
areas (PAs) and outside of both
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Percentage of range of occurrence
/areaof IBAs
Inside designated PAs Inside proposed PAs
Outside PAs
Recent forest cover loss and potential future pressure on forests and biodiversity
Areas where deforestation has occurred recently can potentially indicate where deforestation is
likely to continue in the near future. According to the latest assessment based on remotely sensed
information (Forêts d’Afrique Centrale Évaluées par Télédétection (FACET), 2010), the area
affected by forest cover loss in the DRC between 2000 and 2010 amounts to about 3.4 million
hectares (Figure 18). Some of this forest cover loss has happened close to the boundaries of
protected areas, and a small fraction of it is located within designated protected areas. If
deforestation is likely to spread from recently deforested areas, a simple estimate of pressure on
forest carbon can be made by identifying areas adjacent to those that have recently lost their
forest cover. The 240 metres around areas of recent forest cover loss store almost 13% (3.2 Gt)
of the country’s biomass carbon. This figure rises to 22% (5.3 Gt) when increasing the buffer
around already affected areas to 480 metres
16
. As biodiversity is also potentially at risk in these
areas they may be especially important locations in which to consider action to reduce
deforestation. However, implementing REDD+ may be particularly costly and challenging in areas
where deforestation pressure is highest.
16
The 240 and 480m belts around areas affected by forest cover loss were generated at the 60m
resolution of the original FACET (2010) data by expanding the area around cells affected by forest cover
loss by 4 and 8 pixels respectively. To estimate biomass carbon within these belts, FACET data had to
be scaled up and calculations were done by looking at the proportion of each analysis cell affected by
forest cover loss.