This report, produced in collaboration with Climate Analytics and Rencontre pour la Paix et les Droits de l’Homme (RPDH), demonstrates that only good governance will allow Congo’s forests to play a crucial role in the fight against global warming and to comply with Congo’s commitments to the Paris Agreement via its NDCs. 

The report creates a tool in order to assess forest governance and to come up with the needed improvements to achieve the NDCs’ objectives.

Recommendations:

Five years after ratifying the Paris Agreement, Congo can raise the level of ambition for its NDCs to better reflect the essential contribution of forests to climate.

The Congolese government and EU donors must therefore continue to work together to strengthen the VPA and better integrate forest governance into the NDCs. They should:

• Prioritise transparency through access to information specifically on exploration and exploitation permits in the extractive sectors and in the NDC process.
• Increase participation of all stakeholders notably civil society and communities in forest planning, management and monitoring activities, and in the implementation of NDCs so that their views and rights are considered in policy decisions.
• Strengthen intersectoral coordination mechanisms, particularly on climate, by identifying and harmonising intersectoral interests.
• Include specific indicators on avoided deforestation in the NDCs.
• Strengthen CSO role in monitoring forest and land governance law enforcement and support the use of governance measurement tools to track and stimulate change.
• Operationalise complaint mechanisms in the forest and land sectors and ensure that they are accessible to everyone to step up the fight against illegalities and corruption.
• Ensure effective implementation of timber legality assurance tools to guarantee the legality of the timber.
• Encourage donor support to improving forest governance through the VPA, land use planning, tenure security and community forestry.