Congo Basin nations to pay communities for protecting forests
Last month Congo Basin governments used the COP30 summit in Belém to unveil a payments-for-environmental-services scheme meant to shift incentives for communities that rely on forests. The plan, backed by the Central African Forest Initiative, sends money directly to farmers and other participants through a mobile app. Payments are tied to verified tasks such as agroforestry, reforestation, forest regeneration, conservation work, and deforestation-free agriculture, reports Anne Nzouankeu.
Officials say the system has moved beyond the experimental stage. “Hundreds of farmers are already under contract and the first direct mobile payments based on performance were successfully made this month, confirming the efficiency and fairness of the system,” Kirsten Schuijt, director-general of WWF International, told Nzouankeu. Pilot efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of the Congo now cover nearly 3,000 hectares and involve about 10,000 people. In Gabon, 15 villages are slated to sign conservation contracts next year that will apply to roughly 50,000 hectares.
To expand the model, CAFI has pledged another $100 million, in addition to the $25 million already committed. Whether that funding translates into durable results will depend on execution. Roger Pholo Mvumbi, who leads a DRC civil-society platform focused on food security, argues that precision matters. “The deployment of Payments for Environmental Services is a fine initiative, on the sole condition that the real producer is formally identified,” he said. Without that, benefits could drift away from those doing the work.
The urgency is clear. The Congo Basin lost more than 35 million hectares of forest between 1990 and 2020, with clearing driven by farming, fuelwood demand, logging and mining. Pholo sees the new approach as one way to slow the trend.
“The payment system can precisely offer communities alternative incomes by remunerating them for practices that preserve the forest rather than destroy it,” he told Nzouankeu.