Since 2012, GRET has been supporting a periurban agroforestry scheme that it helped to set up in the Haut-Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The objective is to address the dual challenge of fighting deforestation in the miombo ecosystem and contributing to populations’ food security.
For the past twenty or so years, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been exploring several possible options to achieve its objectives in terms of fighting deforestation and ensuring food security. Rural and urban populations are highly dependent on forest resources to cover their food requirements. GRET is an active participant in this process.
Unlike the rest of the country, the population in Haut-Katanga province lives mainly in urban areas. Agricultural development is therefore a crucial issue for food supplies in urban centres. In soils with a low level of fertility, rural households practice slash-and-burn agriculture, which depends on the duration of forest regrowth, enabling soil fertility to be restored during the fallow season. This type of agriculture – which is under pressure from extension of urban settlement, mining and agro-industrial activities, and degradation of ecosystems – no longer allows farmers to cover their needs. To compensate their drop in income, in parallel to farming, the latter produce charcoal, which is more profitable than agricultural activities in a context where demand from urban centres is increasing. These family strategies are degrading the fragile miombo ecosystem.
Gradual evolution towards shared governance of the agroforestry scheme
The support provided by GRET since 2012, which was organised around two projects (Afodek and then APHK), made it possible to set up an agroforestry scheme. Since 2016, this scheme has been managed by the Kipushi agroforestry scheme associations centre (CAPAK), which is an umbrella association with ten member associations bringing together a total of 147 operators.
GRET is now providing support and advice to CAPAK and associations, and is taking a commons-based approach to governance and management.
For GRET, the commons correspond to a dynamic: the way in which individuals who depend on a resource or a service become collectively organised to preserve it. In this case, the resource is an agroforestry scheme.
By helping the parties concerned to become aware of this dynamic, the commons-based approach provides a framework of discussion conducive to starting a collective learning dynamic on governance and management of the scheme. This approach also opens the way for recognition of the scheme as a “common” by external stakeholders. This should improve its institutional environment and the promotion of this mode of land management.
The project aims to reduce deforestation as part of the fight against climate change by providing an alternative to exploitation of natural forests to meet households’ energy needs.
The objective is also to respond to households’ difficulty to generate decent income via predominantly slash-and-burnagricultural systems. This can be achieved by combining food crops and acacia plantations to produce charcoal (source of income), with the latter also improving soil fertility. Due to the proximity with the city of Lubumbashi (2 million inhabitants), the aim is also to develop a market-gardening offer in the scheme.
