Advancing Forest Land Rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the world’s major biodiversity hotspots hosting the second-largest rainforest in the world and home to approximately 250 ethnic groups. Yet this rainforest is under threat. From 2022 to 2023 alone, the DRC lost 2.55 million hectares of tree cover, and much of this loss has occurred in areas where land rights are still unclear or unrecognized.

This is a critical moment. In November of 2021, the DRC validated its new land policy document, and since then, NGOs, CSOs, and other actors have been pushing to implement it and document valuable forested land. The success of local mapping pilots will provide a replicable pathway for national land reform, anchoring climate resilience and biodiversity protection in secure tenure.

The Tenure Security Project in the DRC is designed to strengthen the recognition and protection of community land rights through a participatory, government-aligned, and technology-driven approach. Jointly implemented by SPFA (Solidarité pour la Promotion des Femmes Autochtones), CONAREF (Commission Nationale de la Réforme Foncière), and Cadasta, the project directly impacts the national land reform process by providing a replicable, evidence-based methodology for documenting and securing customary lands. The project responds to one of the DRC’s most pressing development challenges: widespread land tenure insecurity affecting Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP and LCs), weak land governance systems, overlapping claims, and limited legal recognition leaving millions vulnerable to conflict, exclusion, and displacement.