In February 2016, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) became the latest country in the Congo Basin to provide a legal basis for communities to manage their own forests. The signature by DRC’s Environment Minister of a Ministerial Order on the management of community forests [Concessions Forestières des Communautés Locales (CFCL)] followed a 2014 Presidential Decree laying out the process through which these community forests could be applied for by local communities and indigenous people.

These new laws allow for ‘multi-use’ community forest concessions to be held in perpetuity for up to 50,000 hectares of land – ten times more than the maximum amount authorised in any other country in the region. The potential implications of this reform are significant, given that DRC has the second largest and most intact area of contiguous rainforest in the world, accounting for more than half of the total remaining rainforests in the Congo Basin region.