Conflict-Driven Deforestation Devastates Mount Nyiragongo Slopes in DRC

In Summary

• Ongoing conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, particularly from the M23 militia insurgency, has led to severe deforestation in the Mount Nyiragongo area and the Virunga National Park, displacing over 1.7 million people.
• The United Nations reports that forest loss in the region has reached unprecedented levels since 2021, exacerbated by illegal logging and charcoal production by displaced residents trying to survive.
• Virunga Park Director Emmanuel de Merode and other officials highlight the conflict's significant impact on accelerating deforestation and hampering conservation efforts, with armed groups profiting from the destruction.

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo- Under the denuded slopes of Mount Nyiragongo volcano in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, traders in Kibati town barter over sacks of charcoal, a product of deforestation that an ongoing conflict has pushed to unprecedented levels, the United Nations reports.

Motorbikes piled with freshly sawn planks zip down the main road in Kibati, a community that has remained under Congolese army control even as a two-year insurgency by the M23 militia advanced in conflict-torn North Kivu province, displacing more than 1.7 million people.

"In the camp, we're dying of hunger. We've decided to make charcoal so we can feed our children," said displaced vendor Jacques Muzayi at Kibati.

The insecurity has worsened the pressure on the region's once densely forested hillsides and its protected Virunga National Park, home to many of the world's last mountain gorillas.

"There used to be a forest here," said Bantu Lukambo, head of a local environmental organization. He stood outside Kibati within the park, in scrubland dotted with hacked-up tree stumps. Only a few trees around a nearby park ranger station remained standing. "It is since the start of the war that the combatants have been devastating Virunga," he added, describing how this paved the way for smaller-scale destruction.

Each morning in Kibati, crowds of local residents and people displaced by the fighting enter the park's territory in search of logs to burn to make charcoal for cooking. Others go deeper to cut trees for planks or plant crops in the newly open land.

Forest loss in Nyiragongo and Rutshuru, two territories in the conflict zone and partly within the national park, has "reached unprecedented levels" since 2021, when authorities declared martial law in the east in response to rising violence, a United Nations report stated on July 8.

In areas they control in North Kivu, armed actors from all sides profit off the production or trade in wooden planks, while illegal and uncontrolled logging has led to "the destruction of significant swaths of virgin forest in protected areas of Virunga," the report said.

Data from Global Forest Watch, an initiative that uses satellites to track deforestation, showed that annual tree cover loss in Virunga rose over 22% to 6,804 hectares in 2021 and a further 7,255 hectares were lost in 2022 as the insurgency continued.

Virunga Park Director Emmanuel de Merode said estimating the extent of forest loss and its causes is complicated due to many threats, including recent volcanic eruptions. But "the conflict has greatly accelerated deforestation," he told Reuters, describing the area around Nyiragongo volcano as a particular concern. "All the slopes of Nyiragongo have been completely deforested. I fly over these areas regularly, so I see it."

For years, militia-linked insecurity has troubled Virunga, whose expanses of forest and savannah make it one of the most biodiverse territories on the continent, with three types of great ape, bush elephants, and the endangered Okapi - nicknamed Africa's unicorn.

De Merode said M23's occupation of parts of Virunga had greatly limited his rangers' ability to monitor and protect those areas.

"I want the authorities to do everything possible to end this war," said Christoph Lewis, another displaced man in Kibati who earns up to 500 Congolese francs ($0.18) unloading planks, some of which were hewn from trees felled within the park. "It is the war that drives people to destroy the environment," he said.