PROJECT DOCUMENT SECTION 1: PROJECT IDENTIFICATION 1.1 Project title: Community-based management of land and forests in the Grand Kivu and Lac Télé-Tumba landscapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 1.2 Project number: GFL/ PMS: 1.3 Project type: FSP 1.4 Trust Fund: GEF 1.5 Strategic objectives: GEF strategic long-term objective: BD1 LD IP CCM Strategic programme for GEF IV: 1.6 UN Environment priority: Healthy and Productive Ecosystem; Ecosystem Governance 1.7 Geographical scope: National Democratic Republic of Congo 1.8 Mode of execution: External 1.9 Project executing organization: Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD) 1.10 Duration of project: 60 months Commencing: Completion: 1.11 Cost of project US$ % Cost to the GEF Trust Fund 13,761,468 17.2 Co-financing Type of Co- Investment Sources of Co-financing Name of Co-financier Amount ($) financing Mobilized Multilateral Agency World Bank Grant Investment mobilized 8,766,944.26 Multilateral Partners WWF-FAO (CAFI) Grant Investment mobilized 10,000,000 International NGO WWF Grant Investment mobilized 7,895,435 National Government Ministry of Environment and In Kind Recurrent expenditure 3,000,000 Sustainable Development 1 National Government Ministry of Environment and Cash Recurrent Expenditures 2,000,000 Sustainable Development Contribution Regional Government Provincial Government of Sud In-Kind Recurrent Expenditure 3,000,000 Kivu Regional Government Provincial Government of In-Kind Recurrent Expenditure 3,000,000 Nord Kivu NGO REPALEF: Network of Cash Recurrent Expenditure 12,000,000 Indigenous Population for Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystem of DRC International NGO CARITAS Sud Kivu Cash Investment Mobilized 6,876,434 Private Sector SAFBOIS S.A.R.L Cash Investment Mobilized 20,000,000 Total Co-financing 76,532,813.26 2 1.12 Project summary The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the most diverse countries in Africa in terms of natural resources. It is home to the second largest rainforest in the world, and the largest in Africa. The huge forests of the DRC provide goods and services, as well as jobs that are critical to the livelihoods of millions of people living in rural and urban areas of the country. These include reliance on timber and non-timber forest products, supplies of wildlife for protein, as well as the benefits of water and soil protection, just to name a few. The project locations (the Lac Tumba Landscape and Grand Kivu) host an important community of indigenous people. These communities are very dependent on the forests as their only productive landscape that provide for their livelihoods. Beyond livelihoods, the indigenous communities have intimate social economic and cultural ties with forest spaces. In this regard, these are social forest spaces for the indigenous communities. Beyond local exploitation and the use of environmental resources by local communities, the private sector investment is equally active in different sectors of environmental resources exploitation in the same forest landscape. Hence, extractive resource zones of different stakeholders frequently overlap with local communities’ traditional resource use areas. This makes the forest landscapes in the DRC highly contested spaces between socio-cultural and livelihoods interests and economic interests of the private sector. Involving local populations in managing, conserving and protecting natural resources, as well as maintaining their access to natural resources should therefore be one of the development priorities in the forest landscape. In this regard, the private sector as well as policy makers need to engage local communities not as victims of forest exploitation, but as sustainable managers of forest landscapes. Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) promotes conservation through the sustainable use of natural resources; enabling communities to generate incomes that can be used for rural development, while promoting decentralization of natural resource management and governance through responsive local institutions. CBNRM aims to create the right incentives and conditions for an identified group of resource users within defined areas to use natural resources sustainably. This means enabling the resource users to benefit (economically) from resource management and providing strong rights and tenure over land and the resources. At the core, CBNRM encourages community participation in natural resource management while strengthening the sense of ownership which boosts sound stewardship practices in the exploitation of natural resources that underpin livelihoods and socio-cultural interests. The objective of this project is to scale up and improve the management of peatlands and forest landscapes through CBNRM in targeted transboundary landscapes. Implementation of this project will result in many local and global benefits. It will contribute to economic development and the alleviation of poverty in targeted landscapes. This will benefit not only the people in these landscapes, but also the country as a whole, the Congo Basin region, and the global community. It will do so by helping to conserve the forests and other biological resources that are essential for economic development in these landscapes through cross-sectoral integration of sustainable land management into plans, policies, strategies, funding mechanisms and multi-sectoral stakeholder groups. Direct beneficiaries include millions of people whose social and economic wellbeing depend on the forests in these landscapes. The local benefits will include: enhanced agricultural production through reduced land degradation; maintenance of the structure and functions of ecological systems to enhance the quantity and quality of ecosystem services; improvement in the health of peatland ecosystems (in the Lac Tumba Landscape) and rainforest ecosystems (in Grand Kivu) that are in turn critical for the tourism industry, fishing and, in the mid to long-term, avoiding catastrophic beach erosion. Additionally, the project will empower direct resource users and other stakeholders to participate directly in the conception, monitoring and adaptive management of land and resources – with special attention of the vulnerable in society (women and indigenous groups). 3 The government agencies and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the country as well in the Congo basin region will also benefit through knowledge exchange and information sharing linked to the Regional Project that will strengthen their capacity in natural resource management in general, and in particular, biodiversity conservation and fast-track climate action and Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) implementation. The work with government and CSOs to establish favourable legal frameworks for CBNRM (e.g. resource ownership, tenure and access.) will be an important pillar in the general implementation arrangement of the project. Thus, through its CBNRM participatory approach, this project will support stakeholder consultations for consensus-building around themes of common regional interest, including fostering transnational cooperation and regional stability and security – both of which are critical factors for sustainable economic development. In terms of overall environmental benefits, the project will aim to protect large swathes of intact forests, globally significant biodiversity, regional climate and prevent greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction and degradation of forests and peatlands. This project will work with national and sub- national level stakeholders to engage economic sectors to negotiate the application of biodiversity conservation and sustainable use measures, and bring about necessary changes in the model of natural resources management in the project locations. The project will work with local communities to strengthen conservation on the globally important peatlands of the Lac Tumba Landscape, protected areas1 and biodiversity reserves; and communal forest and productive lands of both project locations. Through strong collaboration with, and engagement of local communities and other key stakeholders operating at the local level, this project will contribute to addressing existing threats to biodiversity, ecosystem health and associated ecosystem services, as well as artisanal livelihoods and subsistence activities. The project will work with communities to establish and operationalise multi-use ‘Community Conservation Areas’ (CCAs), including putting in place measures to ensure the sustainable utilisation of wild resources and conservation-friendly farming practices. In order to secure the buy-in from local communities but also sustainability and part of the exit strategy, the project will support sustainable livelihood activities that effectively generate socio-economic benefits and build their capacity to achieve development goals. The project will contribute to 8,182,184 tCO2eq avoided emissions in terms of lifetime direct as well as consequential GHG emissions avoided over a time horizon of 20 years. 1 “a geographically defined area, which is designated or regulated and managed to achieve specific conservation objectives”. 4 Table of Contents SECTION 1: PROJECT IDENTIFICATION ............................................................................................... 1 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................... 7 Section 2: Background and Situation Analysis (Baseline