Keywords:

FOREST, DRC, COUNTRY, DEFORESTATION, ACRE, ENGUNDA, INDIGENOUS, COMMUNITY, CONGO,

HECTARE

Digest:
...Forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been disappearing at
increasing speed, with annual deforestation rates exceeding 1 million hectares (2.5
million acres) in the past five years and believed to have surged during the COVID-
19 pandemic....
...Poor governance and corruption are considered the biggest obstacles to
protecting the country’s forests from the pressures of subsistence agriculture and
fuelwood collection, as well as the expansion of legal and illegal industrial
operations....
...Progress on improving forest management has been made through the implementation
of community forest legislation and a new law concerning Indigenous people’s right
to their forests, but their implementation remains far from ideal....
...There’s a saying in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that refers to
“Article 15,” a nonexistent paragraph of the country’s constitution during the
Mobutu Sese Seko dictatorship in the 1970s....
...Considered by the World Bank one of the poorest countries in the world based on
GDP per capita, as well as being home to 60% of the Congo Basin, the DRC faces many
challenges, one of them being the ever-increasing speed of deforestation....
...A visualization of tree cover loss by Global Forest Watch’s Forest Atlas shows
that, in the DRC, forest is disappearing far away from main roads and urban
conglomerations in the middle of the country....
...“The DRC is a stateless place where there are no cheap food imports, no oil
exports and little food aid,” Hansen told Mongabay....
...“Thousands of people are pushed into the forests to feed themselves....
...Although rates of deforestation and forest degradation here are considered
moderate compared to those of the rainforests in Brazil or Indonesia, the trend is
ongoing....
...Between 2015 and 2019, 6.37 million hectares (15.7 million acres) of tree cover
was lost, with annual rates regularly surpassing 1 million hectares (2.5 million
acres)....
...In 2019 alone, 475,000 hectares (1.17 million acres) of primary forest
disappeared, making the DRC second to only Brazil for total deforestation that
year....
...With two-thirds of Congolese living on less than $1.90 per day, the DRC ranks
179th out of 189 countries in the U.N.’s Human Development Index....
...In a 2007 analysis of the state of the forests after the Congo wars, which ended
in 2002, a group of researchers from the Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR), the World Bank and the French Agricultural Research Centre for
International Development (CIRAD) identified a major challenge for the DRC: to
reconcile efforts to alleviate poverty and conserve its crucial ecosystems at the
same time....
...To prevent the forests from disappearing, the analysis called for better forest
management and financing models.Thirteen years later, the pressure on the Congolese
forests has not eased....
...“If we go on like this, the loss of forests will continue to increase,” Alain
Engunda, outreach and training coordinator at the World Resources Institute in
Kinshasa, told Mongabay in an interview....
...Engunda is also a technical adviser to the Ministry of the Environment and
Sustainable Development (MEDD), as well as the National Forest Fund, assisting them
to monitor where forest cover loss occurs....
...Engunda said his main concern is the country’s increasing urbanization and the
corresponding rise in electricity demand....
...According to Engunda, changing these numbers by providing power using the
country’s natural resources could tackle one of the potentially major drivers of
deforestation....
...Experts agree that poor governance is the biggest threat to the DRC’s
ecosystems....
...“There is no national plan to fight deforestation, that’s the problem,” Engunda
said....
...One plan that was drawn up is the DRC’s National Strategy for Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), adopted in 2012....
...A venomous snake in the DRC....
...Photo by Hugh Kinsella Cunningham.Victories for communities and Indigenous
peopleOn paper, the DRC has solid regulations regarding its forests....
...More than 40 laws, decrees and orders regulate the country’s forest sector, most
importantly the new Forest Code of 2002....
...Signed in 2018, the latter is supposed to protect the 145 million hectares (358
million acres) of the world’s largest contiguous peatland area — an Alaska-sized
expanse of forest in the DRC’s Cuvette Centrale region....
...A recent milestone in the forest sector was the adoption of a community forest
law in 2016, which grants local communities the right to obtain forest titles and
manage their lands....
...“Now, communities can’t just cut in an uncontrolled way, they need to have a
management plan,” Engunda said....
...While the legislation was received with enthusiasm among civil society actors,
challenges remain when it comes to commonly marginalized groups like women and
Indigenous people....
...The same applies to the DRC’s estimated 800,000 to 1 million Indigenous
people....
...“The government can take their lands at any moment,” said Joseph Itongwa from
the Network of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities for the Sustainable
Management of Forest Ecosystems (REPALEF) in an interview with Mongabay....
...Seminomadic Pygmies inhabit the forests of the DRC, but don’t hold any legal
rights to their ancestral lands, which they depend on for food, medicine and
spiritual purposes....
...For Itongwa, this comes as a victory for civil society and Indigenous people....
...However, the DRC’s track record of non-adherence to its own laws dampens
expectations....
...Even though the Forest Code includes a moratorium on new concessions, it has not
prevented the government from allocating permits to investors....
...In January of this year, Minister of the Environment Claude Nyamugabo Bazibuhe
granted nine forest concessions, covering more than 2 million hectares (5 million
acres), to two Chinese companies....
...According to Raoul Monsembula, who coordinates Greenpeace’s forests campaign in
Kinshasa, “politicians and high-ranking military officers illegally collaborate
with Chinese companies....