- Environmental and human rights advocacy organizations say an Indian company has misled communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, convincing them to sign away the rights to sell carbon credits from the restoration, reforestation or avoided deforestation of locally managed forests.
- These forests, managed under a structure known by the French acronym CFCL, provide communities with control over how land is managed while giving them access to the resources the forests provide, proponents of the initiative say.
- But the contracts, the implications of which were not fairly or adequately explained to community members, may restrict their access to the forests for generations to come, the advocacy groups say.
- These organizations and the communities are now calling on the Congolese government to cancel the contracts.
Iluka Alain was a bit surprised when the two men turned up on a motorcycle in December 2021 in Bofekalasumba, the village where he’s chief in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo. The men spoke in Lingala, a widely spoken language in the DRC, and said they were from a company called KMS. They seemed in an awful rush, pressing him on whether Bofekalasumba had a management committee for its local community forest concession, known by the French acronym CFCL in the DRC.
Iluka said the village hadn’t formed one yet. Right away, the men told him to form a provisional committee of seven people. Not one to deny the request of his guests, Iluka did so. In…
