Community forest in Eastern DR Congo tests promise of local control amid conflict

Spanning some 150 million hectares, the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the most coveted in the world, sought by logging companies and controversial carbon-offset developers alike.

In 2023, after four years of negotiations and bureaucratic hurdles, villages in the Yainyongo community secured official rights to 11,000 hectares in Tshopo Province. The concession gives them the power to manage and protect their forest, even as conflict simmers in the region.

Henry, displaced by intercommunal violence, says tensions escalated when a company known as Cap Congo sought to buy forest land. “If we go back, we will have nowhere to farm,” he said, alleging the company fuelled divisions while profiting from the forest.

Although the Congolese state formally recognises Indigenous land rights, communities often struggle to enforce them amid corruption and overlapping concessions. Jerome Bitilaongi, an elder in Romee village, says outsiders repeatedly tried to seize their forest. A recent Mbole–Lengola conflict, he adds, nearly tore the community apart.

Since 2014, a “community forestry” mechanism has allowed villages to obtain concessions of up to 50,000 hectares, provided they manage them sustainably. Dieumerci Asumani of the national research institute INERA says the reform followed years of failed state oversight and ineffective logging controls.

But turning legal recognition into reality has required years of boundary disputes and local negotiations, a fragile process in a forest where land remains both a lifeline and a source of conflict.