Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Examining support for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the context of REDD+ in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Workshop on Gender and Indigenous Women’s Rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Protecting Rights to Land and Forests

Aide, échanges commerciaux et investissements de la Chine: Quelles conséquences pour les forêts de la République démocratique du Congo?

Suivi des clauses sociales en République démocratique du Congo 2011-2020

L’essentiel des ressources financières consacrées aux infrastructures est allouée au secteur de l’éducation, soit environ 4 millions USD (74 %), suivis par 20 % dans les infrastructures sanitaires, 4 % dans les infrastructures routières et enfin 1 % dans le secteur des adductions d’eau. Dans le secteur de l’éducation, les bénéficiaires directs sont estimés à environ 36 446 élèves cumulés durant la période de suivi. Au total, c’est 127 écoles, 85 centres de santé, 27 bâtiments administratifs, 11 points d’eau et 436 kilomètres (km) de route qui ont été réalisés dans le cadre des clauses sociales.

Monitoring of social clauses in the Democratic Republic of Congo 2011-2020

The bulk of financial resources devoted to social clause infrastructure projects is allocated to those in the education sector, accounting for about USD 4 million (74%); this is followed by 20% allocated for healthcare infrastructure, 4% for road infrastructure and 1% for water supply infrastructure. Cumulatively across the whole monitoring period (2011-2020), an estimated 36,466 students were direct beneficiaries of the education sector. A total of 127 schools, 85 health centres, 27 administrative buildings, 11 water points and 436 kilometres of road were built within the framework of social clauses.

Uneven transmission of traditional knowledge and skills in a changing wildmeat system: Yangambi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Indigenous communities typically hold diverse traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of their socialecological system. Much of this knowledge is embodied as skills related to subsistence practices within a specific landscape and is associated with community values and norms. Ways of knowing often reflect the different activities traditionally undertaken by men and women. The incursion of external forces, including urbanisation, the cash economy and migration tends to diminish transmission of traditional embodied skills. Knowledge can be lost as culturally significant environments degrade or species become extirpated. Lack of opportunity to develop traditional knowledge and skills can diminish feelings of place and identity, and thus capacity for local environmental stewardship.The Yangambi region, Democratic Republic of Congo is a hunting territory of the Turumbu ethnic group. We used questionnaires to explore how levels of wildmeat knowledge and skill may have changed over time among the Turumbu. The responses showed lower levels of self-reported skill among women who started to participate in the last 10-15 years. This pattern partly reflects the period of ‘apprenticeship’ but may also suggest diminished learning opportunity in recent years.Skills in cooking, smoking, and selling wildmeat persist at a higher level than skills in curing disease and gathering wild produce. There was a much more marked pattern for men, with diminishing levels of wildmeat skill reported for around 35-40 years, and even earlier for knowledge of traditional medicine and wildmeat taboos. Questions about mentoring suggested that women have maintained knowledge pathways between mother and daughter, while men showed a shift towards increased learning from uncles.Gender differences in sharing and learning TEK may be linked to the type of skills that remain valuable in a changing social, ecological, and economic context. Men traditionally undertake the capture elements of hunting, while women deal with wildmeat processing, marketing, and cooking. The Yangambi wildmeat system has evolved from subsistence to a strongly market-driven economy during the lifetime of our study participants. This shift may partly explain why market-based skills such as food smoking and selling have endured longer than hunter’s nature-based knowledge.

Vers un régime foncier juridique spécial protecteur des peuples autochtones et des communautés locales des zones forestières en République Démocratique du Congo

A l’aune de la définition d’une nouvelle réforme de la politique foncière en République Démocratique du Congo, la présente étude ouvre une piste de réflexion en vue de contribuer à la mise en œuvre d’une politique foncière adéquate susceptible d’assurer la protection juridique spéciale des communautés locales et peuples autochtones vivant autour des concessions forestières. Il analyse non seulement les efforts fournis par le législateur congolais en vue de construire un régime juridique spécial protecteur des peuples autochtones et des communautés locales à l’accès aux ressources naturelles, mais également offre les préalables avant la mise en œuvre d’un régime foncier spécial protecteur des peuples autochtones et des communautés des zones forestières (Communautés locales) en République Démocratique du Congo avec un essai des propositions.

Assessing the importance of livestock for the livelihoods of rural people in South Kivu, DR Congo

Assessing the importance of livestock for the livelihoods of rural people in South Kivu, DR Congo

For the young

The story began in the early 1990s. And it must be said that it began rather badly! At the request of a German company, Edmond Mahuta and about 15 young people decided to start a business growing peppers in the Masi-Manimba region, 250 km east of Kinshasa

Assessing post-conflict challenges and opportunities of the animal-agriculture system in the Alpine region of Uvira district in Sud-Kivu Province, D. R. Congo

The Alpine region of Uvira District in South-Kivu Province faces low agricultural productivity challenges largely due to human population pressure on the natural resource base. During the dry season, conflicts between crop farmers and livestock breeders are common. This region is located 2500 – 3020 m a.s.l. and is almost inaccessible due to poor road infrastructure. To understand the interactions between natural resources (forests, pastures, soils) and sedentary agriculture, and to propose solutions for sustainable natural resource management, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) sessions covering three farmer group interviews were conducted in July 2010 in Marungu, Kitembe and Kahololo location. The livelihoods of the Banyamulenge have been transformed from pastoralism to a sedentary system with the introduction of crop cultivation after 1980. Maize, bush beans and Irish potatoes are cultivated with limited success because of late crop maturity under the prevailing climatic conditions. Livestock, mainly cattle, sheep and goats is managed under extensive system, relying on natural pasture far from the human settlements. Livestock plays an important role to define people’s wealth and is mainly managed by men. There is a real need of forages during the dry season; however, cultivation of forages is unknown. On the other hand, pastures appear to be degenerating due to overgrazing. Access by farmers to efficient and effective agricultural extension services is fundamental in order to promote locally adapted and profitable crop and livestock production while at the same time, sustaining the productive resource base and security.

Reducing Wild Meat Sales and Promoting Local Food Security: Lessons Learnt from a Behavior Change Campaign in Yangambi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Marketing strategies to promote behavioral change are increasingly used to reduce the unsustainable use of wild meat. One of the mayor keys for success of behavior change campaigns lies in the choice of the channel for communication and the messaging. In this research, we present a behavioral change campaign implemented in Yangambi, Democratic Republic of Congo framed around an integrated conservation and development objective: improve food security in rural communities, reduce the unsustainable use of wildlife for food and promote locally grown pork and chicken. The campaign was co-developed based on the research team’s knowledge of the hunting system in the study area and the participation of key local stakeholders (village leaders, hunters and their families). It used participatory community theater, various printed materials, radio and face to face interactions. We evaluated the efficiency and clarity of messaging for channels used through semi-structured interviews with hunters, households and wildlife traders. We found that participatory community theater resulted in increased clarity and understanding among hunters and households. Moreover, community theater promoted word-of-mouth communication that reached an audience well beyond the location where the theater was held. Messages that were framed positively and used amusing channels of communication triggered positive receptiveness by our audience. Using local languages, avoiding written materials for illiterate audiences, and using repetitive means of communication may be among the strategies that could help increase the clarity of communication messages, particularly for sensitive topics such as this one. Our work calls for more lessons learnt from the ground about the most appropriate communication channels and messages, keeping in mind the social and cultural background of the audience, and ensuring that messages trigger emotions that lead to the desired changes.

Shaping forest safety nets with markets: adaptation to climate change under changing roles of tropical forests in Congo Basin

Tropical forests hold several goods and services used by forest-dependent people as safety nets to traverse difficult periods of resource supply. These same goods and services are constantly surrounded by emerging markets linking remote communities with major urban centers nationally and internationally. How these markets affect adaptation remains unclear. This paper examines the roles of markets in non-timber forest products that normally serve as safety nets for forest communities, and the implications for climate change adaptation in the Congo Basin. Following the identification and prioritization of forest-based development sectors for adaptation by stakeholders, the types of markets and trades surrounding the identified sectors were examined in two provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a case study in order to evaluate revenue flows and their potential contribution to adaptation by local communities. The distribution of the market revenue leaves local people with returns much lower than the worth of the commodity, while wholesalers and retailers reap most of the benefits and profit from the high variability in volume and market earnings for the same commodity across provinces. Markets may increase the value of a commodity as observed in this study, but their contributions to adaptation appear highly limited for local communities following their distribution among the stakeholders in the market chain. This is likely to be worse in free market settings, especially when it diminishes the safety net roles of forest goods and services. Markets should therefore complement rather than substitute forests roles for adaptation to climate change in tropical forest countries. Capturing the benefits of trade for adaptation is crucial but will require policy reforms and further research that addresses the complexity in benefit sharing.

COVID-19 outbreak and rural household food security in the western Democratic Republic of the Congo

Although global assessments of the initial impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have focused on income, jobs, and health conditions, this study constitutes one of the first studies that assessed the impact of COVID-19 on food security in DRC and established the short-term implications of the COVID-19 outbreak on rural households’ food security in DRC. In addition, the study recommendations contributed to shaping government interventions toward the pandemic in the Country. The study used data from four western provinces of the country on 1339 households. Our results show that 80 % of households experienced an increase in food prices, 61 % a noticeable decrease in the availability of food, and 54 % a decrease in their dietary diversity. Due to changes in food availability, dietary diversity, and food accessibility imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak, >70 % of households experienced either a decrease in the consumption of meat, milk, fish, and cereals or an increase in their consumption of traditional vegetables. In addition, COVID-19 significantly affected food security dimensions in larger households, households with a greater number of members aged 35 years and above, households headed by women, households where members participate in associations or cooperatives, households that depend on crop sales as the major source of income, and in poorer households. These findings highlight the significant implications of the COVID-19 outbreak on household food security in western DRC and underscore the need for emergency interventions to strengthen the resilience of rural people and accelerate their recovery and other long-term measures toward sustainable and inclusive development.

Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on gender equality and the youth and social inclusion in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The agriculture-nutrition nexus in North and South Kivu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The provinces of North and South Kivu, in the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are deeply marked by two decades of conflict. Instability and population displacement have resulted in the destruction of the agricultural base, causing food insecurity and severe malnutrition.

Need in a land of plenty

Reviewing DRC’s poverty estimates, 2005-2012: Unprecedented GDP growth without trickle down

The first decade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) post-conflict reconstruction period (2004-2013) was marked by an unprecedented economic growth in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of 3-4% per year, but was this ‘peace dividend’ translated into widespread poverty reduction within the Congolese population? This working paper answers this question by focusing on the percentage of people in poverty (or poverty headcounts) using micro-level data. The paper uses two national household surveys: the first was conducted in 2004-2005, right before the 2006 elections that inaugurated the first post-conflict government; and the second was carried out in 2012-2013, about seven years after the first round. Both the Institut National de la Statistique (INS) (RDC, 2014) and the World Bank (2016) estimate very high poverty rates; and both point to a significant decrease in poverty between the two survey periods. Using the same datasets, both institutions find that the poverty headcount decreased by five to eight percentage points. The problem with both estimates, however, is that they cannot be replicated. The World Bank reports its poverty estimates without elaborating on the methodology, nor explaining why they differ from the INS results. Although INS provides more detail on the methodology they followed, this information only enabled the authors to replicate its 2005 poverty estimates (RDC, 2006), not its 2012 estimates. When applying the INS’s methodology from 2005 to the 2012 survey, the authors found that the percentage of people in poverty substantially increased from 72% to 81% – in sharp contrast to the INS’s own reported results, and also runs counter to current understandings on the evolution of the DRC’s economy. To produce more accurate poverty estimates and trends, the authors made a number of modifications to the INS methodology.

Nourishing information: the women of the Samwaki association, in Kivu

Mathilde M’Nshangalume, an elderly farmer from the Bukavu region, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, cannot believe it: To think that it took only a few meetings for us to change the way we grow crops and restore prosperity, as if by magic.

From figures to facts: Making sense of socioeconomic surveys in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Over the last decades, both donor organizations and the national government have invested heavily in administering national-level surveys in the DRC. These survey results have been used in planning exercises (e.g. to elaborate the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers) and in evaluation exercises (e.g. to decide on the country’s debt relief), but the quality of these data is highly contentious as some basic demographic information on the DRC is simply unknown. This policy brief first presents the issue and illustrates its direct implications before we present a discussion of possible solutions, also for the short-run.