Abstract
Abstract The Congo Basin hosts the largest continuous tract of forest in Africa, regulating global climate while providing essential resources and livelihoods for humans, while harbouring extensive biodiversity. The threats to these forests are expected to increase. A regional collaborative effort has produced the first systematically validated remote sensing assessment of deforestation and degradation in six central African countries for 2015-2020 period, along with a quantification of associated direct drivers of change. Deforestation and degradation (DD) are not observed to be increasing since 2017 are occurring primarily in already fragmented corridor forests. We assess multiple, overlapping drivers and show that the rural complex, a combination of small-scale agriculture, villages, and roads contributes to the majority of DD. Industrial drivers such as mining and forestry are far less common, although their impacts on carbon and biodiversity could be more permanent and significant than informal activities. Artisanal forestry is the only driver that is observed to be consistently increasing over time. Our assessment produces information relevant for climate change mitigation which require detailed information on multiple direct drivers to target activities and investments.