Paper short abstract:

Natural resource management in the DR Congo is like a jigsaw puzzle that is partially assembled, with diverse management approaches spread across the country. Integration is urgently required to ensure ecosystem integrity as well as the knowledge and practices of Indigenus and local communities.

Paper long abstract:

In the global move toward ecoregional conservation, the delineation and “planning” of landscapes in the Congo Basin was the focus of major investments from the early 2000s. Most of the Congo Basin landscapes incorporate protected areas but land use planning also identified and delineated “community-based natural resource management zones” and “extractive” zones.

In February 2016, the Democratic Republic of Congo passed community forest legislation that went far beyond the areas delineated as CBNRM zones within the Congo Basin landscapes in scope and scale. To date 85 community forestry concessions (CFCs) have been established with 37 pending, currently covering a total of 2.2 million hectares. While many CFCs are found within the Congo Basin landscapes and have been supported by conservation groups, others are independently created and managed.

This paper considers the strengths and limitations of landscapes and CFCs for conservation and for the well-being of people living in and around them. It posits a deep relationship between environmental considerations such as protection of wildlife, climate change adaptation and ecosystem resilience and social development considerations such as cultural continuity, reduction of rural violence and corruption, sustainable rural economic growth and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

The paper identifies complementarities between landscapes and CFCs as well as other pieces of the NRM puzzle such as protected areas, including community reserves, and recommends working at the ecological and social scales necessary to fight the brutal extraction of DRC’s natural resources and concomitant disempowerment and impoverishment of its peoples.