The DRC has 150 million hectares of forests, essential for the climate, but these resources are the subject of tensions between local communities and investors, particularly for concessions intended for carbon offset markets.
After several years of tension, the inhabitants of the village of Romée and the community of Yainyongo find themselves facing both pressure from forestry companies and inter-community conflicts related to access to land and forest resources.
“The conflict was not very widespread before. It became more serious and received more media attention when a company called Cap Congo came and bought the forest, which means that now, if we return, we will have nowhere to cultivate. We feel that it is this company that has used the local people to kill each other, while it profits from the forest,” says Henry, displaced by an intercommunal conflict.
After four years of administrative procedures, the Yainyongo community, including the village of Romée, obtained two official concession titles in 2023, protecting 11,000 hectares in the Tshopo province.
According to Jérôme Bitilaongi, an elder of the village of Romée: “Concessionaires were coming from all sides to invade our forest and take it by force. Those who had support from outside would come at any moment to threaten our forest. And the second thing is the conflict we recently experienced here, the Mbole–Lengola conflict. It was a conflict that almost tore our community apart.”
Dieumerci Asumani, director of the INERA research center, recalls the legal framework: “The forestry code stipulates that the community is responsible for a portion of land. The Congolese state realized that its approach, based on specifications, customary rights, and so on, was not working well. With the presence of both industrial and small-scale logging operators, this still wasn't working, and the state decided to grant the community indefinite management of the forest.”
Despite this community forestry mechanism, the overlapping of concessions and lands leads to conflicts. In 2025, Yainyongo was affected by a conflict triggered by the granting of a concession to a Lebanese company on land disputed between the Mbole and Lengola communities. “Because the white people kept coming to see me, people said that I was the one who had sold the forest,” recounts Jérôme Bitilaongi, the village elder. Armed militiamen targeted his property and livestock. The intervention of the authorities and community mediation efforts restored a fragile peace, but those responsible for the violence remain at large.
