The work and research for development conducted by FORETS “FOrmation, Recherche, Environnement dans la TShopo” (training, research, environment in the Tshopo region) provide opportunities for policy makers, funders and communities to better understand the contribution that forests play in supporting local economies, health and well-being and regional biodiversity.
The project, funded with resources from the XI European Development Fund, is expected to make an important contribution to integrated development of the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its specific objectives are conservation and the sustainable use of the biodiversity and ecosystem services alongside local economic development in the area. Activities take place in Yangambi and Kisangani in the Tshopo Province. They address the need to support local communities through raising awareness and outreach, but also build local human resource capacity though formal university training programs including masters- and doctoral-level programs.
The project includes socio-economic development opportunities in an area of about 400,000 hectares with direct and indirect impacts on a population of approximately one million urban and rural dwellers. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is implementing the project with help from local and international partners.
The Yangambi Biosphere Reserve is situated in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo along the Congo River in one of the world’s largest intact tracts of tropical forest.
The vast tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo are a genetic treasure and offer a means of subsistence for local communities and contribute to the environmental stability of the planet.
For many years, political instability and conflict have hindered efforts to build and benefit from sustainable forest management and natural resource development in the DRC. Since 2001, the country has made some progress with the help of important sectoral reforms, but there are still challenges to the management and conservation of forests, especially in the context of the role forests play in climate change.
The Yangambi biosphere reserve protects 250,000 hectares of tropical forests, a multitude of tree species and endangered animals. However, this reserve faces pressure from expanding agriculture, exploitation of forest products including the conversion of wood to energy and small-scale mining practiced by local communities.
To find lasting solutions to these challenges in such a complex landscape, local mobilization and conservation actions are needed in the reserve and surrounding areas, with an emphasis on collecting solid baseline data and monitor change. In the northern Tshopo province, the FORETS project consists of two parts: helping local communities living near the reserve manage natural resources more effectively and training graduate science students to produce reliable empirical data that will be useful in developing conservation actions.
The FORETS project at Kisangani University, located 90 kilometers east of Yangambi, and INERA aim to bring researchers and local people closer together and to promote development in the Yangambi Reserve and in its surroundings. Training is provided in land and natural resource management, plantation creation and management, and applied and targeted research and development in a city that was, in its time, the largest tropical agricultural research station in the world. This station has gradually lost its importance in recent decades, but CIFOR and its partners will work to support and revive the research and development that takes place there. Given that the DRC has few scientists with graduate degrees, CIFOR will continue to support Congolese masters and doctoral students, strengthen research at the university and provide the tools for development and infrastructure that are lacking.
Restore and develop local research infrastructures in the area around the reserve.
Analysis of the feasibility and impacts of forest plantations for multiple uses, including local energy production.
Create an applied research agenda for sustainable forest management, including the most exploited resources, such as timber and game.
Accompany master’s and PhD students and train the people involved in the project.
This project, which is funded by the European Union, is led by CIFOR as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).