Whatever the reason might be, the point is that African forests have gone from absorbing more carbon than they release, to releasing more carbon than they absorb.

IOW, they have become net emitters as opposed to net absorbers.

You're right that the forests themselves are not emitting carbon. However, human deforestation is causing the sequestered carbon in the trees to be removed from the forest and that is also reducing the forest's ability to absorb carbon.

TFA

> their forests are now dying faster than they are regrowing

> ...driven by deforestation and forest degradation.

Due largely to deforestation caused by humans.

A search for "logging in congos protected forest" will reveal numerous articles on this:

> Despite the ban on new industrial logging, the DRC has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, losing 490,000 hectares (1.2m acres) of primary rainforest in 2020, according to Global Forest Watch.

Education, financial security, and personal liberty are actually proven to work… but they also result in economic gains for the state and increased QoL for the populace, so literally anything else I guess…

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...

It's a one-time process. But so is forests absorbing CO2 as they grow bigger and denser, and we commonly consider that a carbon sink. Makes sense to do the same for the reverse