Impact, an organization dedicated to natural resource management, has just launched an ambitious project entitled “Fostering Resilience” in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This project aims to help local communities in four mining provinces preserve their ecosystem and adapt to the effects of global warming.
Funded by the Kingdom of Sweden, this four-year project has a budget of $7.6 million. Its main objective is to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities to the harmful effects of mining, in particular the extraction of critical minerals necessary for the ecological transition.
Impact CEO Joanne Lebert highlights the importance of responsible exploitation of these critical minerals in the fight against global warming. She explains that the Democratic Republic of Congo, due to its abundant reserves of critical minerals and its rich carbon-storing forest, plays a key role in this ecological transition.
Henric Rasbrant, the Swedish ambassador to the DRC, emphasizes that this project fits perfectly with Sweden’s commitments in the DRC, particularly with regard to the protection of biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources.
The “Fostering Resilience” project aims to strengthen the capacity of local communities to restore and preserve their ecosystems. It will also focus on women’s leadership and the promotion of indigenous knowledge to help communities adapt to climate change.
It is a consortium of local NGOs, including ADGRN, PREMI-CONGO, OCEAN, Tropenbos RDC, SOFEPADI and PAP-RDC, which will be responsible for implementing this project.
The DRC currently has nearly 70% of its territory covered in forests, or 152 million hectares. However, deforestation is accelerating each year, with an estimated loss of 500,000 hectares in 2022, placing the country second in the world after Brazil for felling trees.
If this trend continues, more than a quarter of Congo’s forest could disappear by 2050, and all of the region’s primary forests could be destroyed by 2100.
Faced with this worrying reality, the “Fostering Resilience” project represents a crucial opportunity to consolidate the resilience of local communities and mitigate the consequences of mining on ecosystems.
A project which should also raise awareness and mobilize a wide audience in order to promote the importance of preserving biodiversity and the ecosystem to ensure a sustainable future for the Democratic Republic of Congo.