Stay away from Congo’s ‘carbon bomb’ auction, Greenpeace urges Big Oil

Subject : Environment

Section :Pollution

Context:

Greenpeace has urged major oil and gas companies to not participate in a huge auction of oil blocks in Democratic Republic of Congo at the end of July.
It has called it a carbon bomb.

What are carbon bombs?

It is “an oil or gas project that will result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over its lifetime.”
Whenever coal, oil, or gas is extracted it results in pollution and environmental degradation. Further, carbon emissions take place in particularly large amounts when fuel is burned.
In total, around 195 such projects have been identified world over, including in the US, Russia, West Asia, Australia and India. According to the report, they will collectively overshoot the limit of emissions that had been agreed to in the Paris Agreement of 2015.

Why carbon bomb?

The gas fields are also located in the Congo Basin forest. The Cuvette Centrale region in Congo Basin is world’s largest natural tropical peatlands. It stores three years equivalent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The oil blocks also overlap carbon-rich peatlands in the west African country — an area activists describe as a “carbon bomb”. If these peatlands are disturbed, large quantities of carbon dioxide could be released.

What are peatland?

Peatlands are a type of wetland which occur in almost every country and are known to cover at least three per cent of global land surface.
The term ‘peatland’ refers to the peat soil and the wetland habitats growing on the surface according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
Peatlands are wetlands that contain mixture of decomposed organic material, partially submerged in layer of water, lacking oxygen.
Their high carbon content makes them uniquely vulnerable to incineration if they are drained.