The Democratic Republic of Congo's efforts to shift to sustainable land use is producing first results in the Mai Ndombe province that provide an encouraging model for other countries seeking to reduce deforestation and forest degradation.

By Daniela Goehler, Senior Carbon Finance Specialist, World Bank Group (April, 2017)

For years now, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been a global leader in efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks to mitigate climate change (efforts commonly referred to as ‘REDD+’). The proof of this leadership turning into visible positive impact for people and forests alike was never more evident than during a recent World Bank mission to the DRC that I had the privilege of joining together with Julia Bucknall, the World Bank’s Director for Environment and Natural Resources, and Gentiny Ngobila, the Governor of the Mai Ndombe province.

How encouraging it is to witness real, on-the-ground results. We saw trees and crops being planted and growing on previously degraded savannah landscapes. We saw communities motivated to restore these landscapes, and how that’s transforming land-use from the bottom up. These results are improving livelihoods while helping to mitigate climate change, and they underscore the value of the World Bank Group’s ongoing work with the DRC.

As was highlighted in the January issue of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) newsletter, the DRC’s Emission Reductions Program in the Mai Ndombe province became the first worldwide to be selected into the FCPF Carbon Fund in December 2016. This large-scale emission reduction program is the first step in implementing DRC's national REDD+ strategy at the jurisdictional level, and is expected to provide a model for green development in the Congo Basin, as well as an important test of climate action on the African continent.

The encouraging results we recently saw firsthand come from one of the investment projects that DRC and the World Bank have strategically aligned to support the implementation of the Emission Reductions Program in Mai Ndombe. Since 2015, and with a US$37 million grant from the Forest Investment Program (FIP), the DRC has been working to address drivers of deforestation related to the demand for agricultural products and fuelwood around the capital, Kinshasa. More specifically, what we saw is Component 1 of the FIP grant (US$14.2 million), which improves community livelihoods and forest landscape management in the Plateau district of the Mai Ndombe province. This work is being implemented on the ground by WWF.

In the Plateau district alone, about 200 Local Development Committees (comprised of local land chiefs, women and other community stakeholders) have been set up and are undertaking participatory land-use planning. The results are simple management plans identifying which areas will be protected and which can be used for production. And all of these activities take place respecting the principles of free, prior and informed consent of local stakeholders.

Communities participating in the FIP project have already produced more than 100,000 acacia plants, and are generating income by planting them to restore degraded land. The program uses acacia because it grows fast and can rapidly provide wood for fuel and building, thus taking pressure off natural forests. To date, about 60 Payment for Environmental Services (PES) contracts have been signed with Local Development Committees for these reforestation activities, and have been set up with an innovative payment system. Here’s how the PES contracts work: The first step is that communities receive 10 cents per acacia seedling they produce. Three months after communities have prepared the degraded land with support from the project and planted seedlings, they receive their first payment for the establishment of the plantation (US$75 per ha); nine months after plantation, they receive a second payment (US$50 per ha) if the seedlings have been properly maintained; and 27 months after initial plantation and after the dry season, communities receive a third payment (US$25 per ha) if the area is thriving.

The project is also doing important work to build capacity of stakeholders. Dozens of decentralized agencies providing extension services and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been trained on how to develop small-scale palm oil plantations in degraded savannah lands. These plantations are growing fast (more than 80,000 palm oil plants have already been grown in nurseries set up by the project), and are providing communities with new streams of income outside of income from deforestation. These service providers and NGOs have also had great success with growing acacia seedlings in nurseries. To date, they have produced more than one million acacia trees for planting in degraded areas.

Moving forward, DRC’s Emission Reductions Program in Mai Ndombe will have all of these results to build on, as the country prepares to negotiate its Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA) later this year. This contract about results-based payments for REDD+ activities from the FCPF Carbon Fund would be an important milestone in supporting the country’s ambition for transformational shift toward sustainable land use and forest protection. While the ERPA negotiations are just about to begin, the impact we had always imagined making with REDD+ is starting to happen in the DRC, and that is something, I thought, was worth writing home about.