Rainforest Giants Brazil, Indonesia, DR Congo Sign Deforestation Pact

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The DRC, which is home to 60 percent of the vast Congo Basin rainforest, has faced criticism for launching an auction in July for oil and gas blocks, some of which are in sensitive areas.

The impoverished central African nation maintains that developing its fossil resources is an economic imperative.

But the country's Environment Minister Eve Bazaida Mazudi said the three nations can offer solutions to climate change together.

"The world is currently getting warmer and warmer, so humanity needs rainforests to bind CO2," she said, according to the Indonesian statement.

Source: Agence France-Presse