COMMUNAUTÉS

More than 500,000 people, including the Wambuti Indigenous Peoples, live around the highland and lowland sectors of the Park. These populations are among the key stakeholders on whom the future of Kahuzi-Biega National Park depends. 

The human population density around the highland sector is very high, with intensive land use activities taking place including agriculture, fishing and livestock farming. The Indigenous Peoples and local communities living on the edge of the Park have traditionally relied upon its resources for their livelihoods.   

Historically, the Park's forests were populated by the Wambuti, a semi-nomadic Indigenous People who lived by hunting and gathering. They roamed the vast forests and depended entirely on the area that is now the Park as a place to live, for food, cultural rituals and medicine. The Wambuti have a very strong emotional and cultural attachment to the Park.

The creation of Kahuzi-Biega National Park in 1970 and its expansion in 1975 led to the mass displacement of Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands in the Park.

Recognizing this troubled past, the Park management team is implementing a participatory approach to community conservation based on respect for human rights. This approach aims to protect the Park's biodiversity and improve the well-being of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities living in the surrounding area.

Reconciling biodiversity conservation with the needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities requires more than participation mechanisms alone. It also depends on sustained support from government and partners to strengthen livelihoods and build resilience to biodiversity loss, climate, and economic pressures. To this end, the Park provides support to key services for these rural communities, including facilitating access to education, scholarships and university grants, health centers, and drinking water. 

The Park’s community conservation program supports surrounding communities by strengthening natural resource governance, reinforcing community institutions, and enabling effective participation in Park management, while also supporting sustainable management of natural resources outside the Park. 

Community participation in the governance of the Park is strengthened through regular dialogue platforms such as the Site Coordination Committee (CoCoSi), the 2019 Bukavu Roadmap Steering Committee (COPIL), and the Community Conservation Committees (CCC). To support meaningful participation, these institutions receive targeted training to strengthen their governance, leadership, and management capacities, based on needs identified jointly with communities. 

A participatory approach to conflict resolution and social safeguards such as the free, prior and informed consent approach, human rights-based conservation, gender mainstreaming, and the Feedback and Grievance Redress Mechanism (FGRM) are tools that the Park is putting in place to enable communities to play an active role in guaranteeing and benefiting from their rights.

The Congolese Government has taken steps to ensure the protection of Indigenous Peoples through a new law designed to protect the cultures, rights, and ways of life of Indigenous Peoples across the country. Organizations including WCS support this goal alongside local organizations representing Indigenous Peoples in order to stem the dynamics of marginalization and exclusion. 

The Park team supports dialogue and the implementation of the Bukavu roadmap, signed in 2019 between the Wambuti clans and the ICCN/DRC Government. This support is particularly evident in issues such as access to land for Indigenous Peoples, the construction of social infrastructure, and support for income-generating activities (IGAs) for communities in the areas bordering KBNP, support for the education of indigenous children and young people, employment opportunities within the Park for neighbouring communities, their involvement in the participatory demarcation of KBNP's boundaries, and the promotion of Wambuti culture.

The Park has established ad hoc practical arrangements with its neighbors, such as special access for the indigenous community to perform cultural rites such as the "sheep rites," known as "Kutambikiya" in the Wambuti language. Our team also encourages job creation for local neighbouring communities, both within its eco-guard and gorilla tracker staff and among its technical teams. Occasional job opportunities, such as the maintenance of tourist trails, are also a means of actively involving and promoting the forest's unparalleled traditional knowledge for conservation purposes.

The Park is also working to establish a system for distributing tourism revenues with local communities. These tourism revenues will benefit communities living around it.

Outside the Park, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities are supported by various organizations to establish (through a participatory process incorporating the free, prior, and informed consent approach) Local Community Forest Concessions (CFCLs) as a source of natural resources in community territories, but also as a means of securing land rights. This is particularly the case in the Oku community reserve to the west of KBNP.