Consortium leader:ERAIFT, DRC
Consortium:ERAIFT (DRC); Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, ULiège (Belgium); INERA (DRC)
RESSAC contribution: EUR54,667
Luki Biosphere Reserve (RBL) is one of three UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme (MAB) sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A remnant of the Mayombe forest at the southern tip of the Guinean-Congolese forest massif, it offers local communities most of their food, medicines, building materials, etc. Agriculture and carbonization are the main sources of income for the region’s inhabitants, and are currently the main drivers of deforestation with repercussions for the region’s biodiversity. This is exacerbated by poverty, proximity to roads and rapid population growth in riverside villages.
It is important to provide a practical evaluation of the ecosystem services (ES) provided by the Luki Biosphere Reserve (RBL), a region located 200 km from Kinshasa in the densely populated Kongo-Central Province. The global objectives of the project are to highlight RBL’s valuable assets, and improve the prospects of funding their future management, most notably under the UNESCO MAB framework. The project will inventory (identify, quantify and geo-locate) types of ecosystem services offered by RBL, and analyse/describe the potential of major environmental services to provide added value for local communities (economic, social, cultural), as well as impacts on the conservation of the reserve. It will also evaluate the local management framework and current value chain structures for high-value environmental services (selecting three or four main ES).
The results of these lines of research will allow the proposal of a governance model for the reserve’s ecosystem services and the formulation of relevant stakeholder engagement and policy advice for managers (and decisionmakers) regarding ecosystem service valuation, reward mechanisms, opportunities, and limitations of socioeconomic valuation in RBL conservation.
The methodological approach will be systemic (a multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral, participatory approach; global and integrated). The results obtained will be disseminated through policy briefs in order to contribute to the strengthening of national forest policies with a view to sustainable forest management and the improvement of living conditions for local populations.
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