Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
In West and Central Africa we foster vital landscapes in Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and DRC, where we have maintained an office since 2006.
Our work in DRC contributes to the creation of a political and regulatory environment that promotes sustainable forest management and the conservation of biodiversity. We support national and local actors to produce, manage, and use spacial data to guide sustainable forest management, including artisanal concessions, restoration of degraded areas, governance of the wood-energy supply chain, and sustainable agriculture practices.
Our experts played a pivotal role in establishing community forest legislation that enables forest peoples to secure forest and land rights. We provided tools and training to help communities to pursue sustainable livelihoods. As a result, residents of more than 52 community forests spanning 944,250 hectares have secured forest rights.
Across the region, we monitor the dynamics of changing forest cover through free and online Forest Atlases and strengthen national capacities to manage and share forest information to enable more coordinated and transparent decisions on how forests are zoned and managed. We ensure the adoption of near-real time deforestation and fire alerts by government agencies and civil society to monitor and denounce illegal resource extraction and land use. We incentivize transparent and responsible supply chains. We support efforts to decouple production of agricultural and forest commodities from forest loss and degradation. We provide actors trading or financing major forest-risk commodities with strategic advice and cutting-edge information and technology tools such as Global Forest Watch (GFW) Pro and the Open Timber Portal that they can use to assess risk of deforestation and illegal logging in their supply chains and investments.
We also assess how emerging domestic markets — particularly in growing urban centers — are creating new pressures on agricultural commodities, forest products, charcoal, and wood fuel to identify locally appropriate solutions.