Abstract
With about 107 million hectares of moist forest, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a perfect paradox of a natural resources endowed country caught in repeated economic and socio-political crises. Democratic Republic of Congo possesses about 60% of the Congo basin’s forest on which the majority of its people rely for their survival. Even if the national forest land in the countryside is mainly exploited by local populations based on customary rights, they usually do not have land titles due to the fact that the state claims an exclusive ownership of all forest lands in the Congo basin including in DRC. The tragedy of “bad governance” of natural resources is often highlighted in the literature as one of the major drivers of poverty and conflicts in DRC. In the forest domain, several studies have demonstrated that state bureaucracies cannot convincingly improve the governance of forestland because of cronyism, institutional weaknesses, corruption and other vested interests that govern forest and land tenure systems in the country. There are however very few rigorous studies on the role of traditional leaders or chiefdoms in the governance of forests and land issues in the Congo basin. This research aimed at addressing this lack of knowledge by providing empirical evidence through the case study of Yawalo village, located around the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From a methodological perspective, it used a mixed approach combining both qualitative (field observations, participatory mapping, interviews, focal group discussions, and desk research,) and quantitative (remote sensing and statistics) methods. The main findings of our research reveal that: (i) vested interests of traditional rulers in the DRC countryside are not always compatible with a sustainable management of forestland; and (ii) influential users of forestland resources at the local level take advantage of traditional leaders’ weaknesses—lack of autonomy and coercive means, erratic recognition of customary rights, and poor legitimacy—to impose illegal hunting and uncontrolled forest exploitation.
Highlights
The bulk of forest exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) lies on rural small-scale farming with a 2 ha average of surface area per farmer [1,2]
Through the case study of Yawalo village, this study aimed to reduce the lack of knowledge on the ability of traditional chiefdoms to drive a dynamic of change in DRC forest governance at local level, especially in social and political context in the Congo basin where spirits of jungle and “disorder“
The Yawalo village case study allowed observing that traditional leaders’ contribution to the improvement of forestland governance in DRC is substantially jeopardised by certain factors, such as repeated conflicts among various clans of Yawalo and violation of borders—related inter alia to socio-political tensions with neighbouring villages and the crisis of traditional authority
Summary
The bulk of forest exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) lies on rural small-scale farming with a 2 ha average of surface area per farmer [1,2] These processes are in most cases associated to a set of informal local transactions for accessing and controlling natural resources in general and land in particular. In the case of community forestry for example, traditional structures and customary norms are put forward as an alternative organisation system that can substantially improve the governance of forest resources at local level This growing attention to decentralised structures in the global south is a recurring issue in countries, e.g., DRC, in which the role and legitimacy of state bureaucracies in the governance of forestland resources is often contested by non-state actors [7]
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