Expected strong climate, demographic and economic changes in Central Africa threaten the sustainability of ecological, social and economic services Congo Basin Forests (CBF), the second World’s largest rainforest, provide to humanity. In addition to deforestation, anthropogenic environmental impacts will lead to dramatic changes in forest tree functional composition with potential deleterious feedbacks on carbon and water cycles among other services. Through a unique European research partnership and transnational collaborations with Central african country experts, CoForFunc aims at developing an integrated approach for the monitoring of tree functional diversity of the CBF to support biome-scale assessment of their vulnerability to expected climate change and human-induced transformations.