Guaranteeing and protecting the land rights and traditional knowledge of Indigenous communities in the Walikale territory in North Kivu, eastern DRC

Project Overview  

The Walikale Territory is a global biodiversity hotspot, hosting endemic fauna and flora and unique biodiversity like the grauer gorillas and okapis. While a large part of the territory is classified as protected areas – around 1.6 M hectares making up the Maiko and Kahuzi Biega national parks – significant unclassified forest remains. The unclassified forest section is well-conserved, because Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who live and depend on it, use traditional practices that minimises impact and promote regeneration. Despite their vital role in conservation, Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the Walikale Territory face many threats: they experience forced evictions and displacement, denial of access to basic necessities for survival and subsistence and live in constant fear of losing their ancestral forests to the classification of their lands as ‘ecological corridors,’ or ‘national parks.’ 

There is a solution. 

The 2014 Community Forestry Legislation in the DRC offers an opportunity to advance the protection of Indigenous and local communities’ land rights and livelihoods. This legislation allows for the creation of CFCL, which place land under community management.  

Given this opportunity and the urgent need to protect Indigenous and local communities’ rights in the DRC, PIDP, with Tenure Facility’s support, is accompanying 13 communities of the Indigenous Pygmy People to secure 150,000 hectares of forest in the Walikale Territory by the establishment of CFCL in their lands. At the same time PIDP is also strengthening communities’ local governance and sustainable management systems, guided by ancestral knowledge, youth and gender equality and biodiversity protection values. 

Project activities include: 

1. Map, validate and secure recognition of the project communities’ lands through the issuance of CFCL titles. 

2. Provide technical guidance for communities to develop forest management plans for their CFCL to further promote community-led conservation. 

3. Train communities’ local authorities and community members’ – including women and youth- in sustainable forest management.  

4. Promote the establishment of inclusive governance structures that promote gender equality and the integration of young people in forest management processes.  

5. Develop and implement land monitoring systems, managed by both genders and youth, to prevent and document external and internal threats to communities’ forests and biodiversity.  

6. Implement capacity-building trainings and share tools to strengthen PIDP’s institutional and financial capacities, enabling the organisation to further its support to Indigenous Pygmy and local communities across the DRC.