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Forests of the Congo Basin remain lush and green because Indigenous People and Local Communities (IPLCs) take care of them, as they would for their property and personal belongings. Alongside their traditional ecological knowledge, IPLCs deploy many practices to control and manage their customary territories. These practices include community forests (which vary in name from country to country), Indigenous and Community Conservation Areas, and third-party monitoring of forest exploitation and conservation. It is primarily thanks to these efforts that the Congo Basin remains an invaluable asset to the economies of 11 countries, a mega-biodiversity site holding 10% of the world's biodiversity and the world's largest carbon sink. However, maintaining these services is hampered by accelerating deforestation and forest degradation. By 2023, the countries of the Congo Basin had lost almost 700 hectares of forest, more than three times the size of a city like Yaoundé. These disturbances, mainly due to subsistence farming and wood-energy production, can easily overshadow the major contribution of IPLCs to the sustainable management of Congo Basin forests. This event, therefore, aims to analyze this apparent paradox.

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The event will explore the role that geospatial data and technologies can play in showcasing IPLCs' actual contribution to safeguarding the Congo Basin forest and, therefore, global climate action. Innovative approaches to monitoring, reporting, and verifying forest cover dynamics, gains and losses due to deforestation, and degradation of forests in IPLC-controlled territories will be discussed. Such approaches could lead to increased climate financing for IPLCs.

Provisional program

  • Opening, Teodyl Nkuintchua, World Resources Institute
  • Geospatial data and technologies and customary land tenure security, Joseph Itongwa, REPALEAC
  • Community forestry and local pressure over forest coverage
    • Democratic Republic of Congo: Blaise Mudodosi, APEM-RESSAC
    • Republic of Congo: Guy Moussele, REPALEAC-Congo
  • Forest monitoring and geospatial innovations: Clarisse Fombana / Desouza Feujio, SAILD
  • Open discussion

Organizers: WRI, REPALEAC, SAILD, APEM

Image by Molly Bergen/WCS, WWF, WRI