In the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s copper-cobalt belt, a region rich in critical minerals, villagers are turning to local community forest concessions (CFCLs) to prevent their eviction and conserve the remaining savanna forests in the face of mining expansion.
This is an area where miners from the DRC, China, the U.S. and elsewhere are searching for the minerals powering the high-tech, weapons and clean energy industries.
Community forest concessions offer communities land titles in perpetuity and have environmental management plans led by Indigenous and local communities with the support of environmental NGOs and donors.
But these concessions are not a perfect solution against deforestation or the eviction of communities by mining, and also suffer from a lack of funding to support all their environmental efforts.
