At Nairobi's Africa Forward Summit in May 2026, Lee White, a British-born zoologist who spent a decade managing Gabon's national parks before becoming the country's environment minister, stood ready to challenge the world's approach to African conservation. His message was blunt: the Congo Basin is not a charity case or a carbon credit scheme waiting to be monetized by wealthy nations. It is, he insisted, "critical national infrastructure" — as vital to Africa's future as any highway or power plant.
White's argument carries the weight of hard experience. Having watched billions in climate finance promised to the Congo Basin at Glasgow's COP26 summit in 2021, he watched as less than 10% of the pledged funds actually reached the ground. "There are so many promises," he told Mongabay in an interview at the summit. "You get false promises of money. And the problem with false promises is once somebody's promised you money, you don't look for it elsewhere because you think you've found it. And then when it doesn't come, then you have a real problem."
The stakes of this cynicism are written into Africa's climate. The Congo rainforest functions, in White's words, as "the pumping heart of Africa" — losing it means losing rainfall across the Sahel, Ethiopia, and the Blue Nile, as well as Angola and Zambia. This is not romantic environmentalism; it is hydrology. Protecting the forest is protecting water security for a continent increasingly vulnerable to drought, famine, and mass displacement.
Yet White's vision for African energy security extends beyond forest conservation. He defended nuclear power as a necessary tool for the continent's development, despite his own conservationist instincts. "I'm a conservationist and environmentalist," he acknowledged. "There's a certain risk with nuclear, but if you deal with those risks and you avoid the Chernobyls of this world, it is kind of free of carbon dioxide emissions." His reasoning is sobering: over the next 20 to 50 years, Africa could face hundreds of millions of climate and water refugees if energy needs are not met responsibly. Water crises, he suggested, may arrive even before widespread climate displacement — a stark warning to policymakers.
White's tenure in Gabon, which began when he took over the National Parks Agency in 2009 and continued through his appointment as minister under Ali Bongo Ondimba, was marked by an unusual perspective on resource extraction. He resists blaming mining itself for environmental destruction, instead pointing to weak governance as the true culprit. This nuance — distinguishing between responsible extraction and destructive practices — sets him apart from some conservation advocates.
Even more pointed is his critique of the carbon finance system itself. Developed nations, he argues, have systematically failed to honor financial commitments to countries like Gabon that have protected their forests. France's announcement of €23 billion ($26.7 billion) in climate and energy investments at the summit may sound impressive, but White's skepticism is grounded in years of watching pledges evaporate.
Now serving as a special envoy for the Congo Basin following the 2023 coup that removed Bongo from power, White continues advocating for a fundamental reframing: stop treating African ecosystems as global charity projects or carbon offsets. Treat them as what they are — essential infrastructure whose protection is as much about African survival as it is about planetary health.