To save the planet, it is time poor nations get paid for protection

DRC is the first developing nation to decide if rich countries aren't serious about paying the costs that their carbon emissions will impose on poorer ones, they will have to raise the cash themselves

This week, the Democratic Republic of Congo — Africa’s second-largest nation and the sixth-most heavily forested country in the world — is auctioning off large sections of those forests to oil and gas companies. The decision has enraged climate activists: The vast tracts of equatorial forest and peatlands in the Congo River basin are one of the world’s most effective carbon sinks.

Yet the DRC’s leaders, rightly, view the world’s dismay as plain hypocrisy. The Ukraine war has pushed the West into reopening coal power plants and begging Gulf nations to pump more oil. Why, precisely, should one of the