Community evaluation of forest and REDD+ governance quality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has over 100 million Ha of forest and has significant potential to benefit from these forests, including through REDD+ if they are managed effectively. Effective governance of forest landscapes is essential for environmental management and equitable harnessing of ecosystem service benefits for communities. Poor governance, political instability, and capacity limitations in the DRC are widely highlighted. However, there have been few, if any, attempts to evaluate forest governance in the DRC, especially at the community level. This paper reports a community-level evaluation of forest governance in the DRC, using a survey method. The results suggest that REDD+ projects have the ability to improve forest governance as perceived by the community. The research shows that building the right capacity, consulting and accessing the needs of the community and building long-term projects and partnerships a key success factors. These findings and the novel approach to supporting communities to evaluate their governance are applicable to similar community-level forest governance contexts.

Low N2O and variable CH4 fluxes from tropical forest soils of the Congo Basin.

Globally, tropical forests are assumed to be an important source of atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) and sink for methane (CH4). Yet, although the Congo Basin comprises the second largest tropical forest and is considered the most pristine large basin left on Earth, in situ N2O and CH4 flux measurements are scarce. Here, we provide multi-year data derived from on-ground soil flux (n = 1558) and riverine dissolved gas concentration (n = 332) measurements spanning montane, swamp, and lowland forests. Each forest type core monitoring site was sampled at least for one hydrological year between 2016 - 2020 at a frequency of 7-14 days. We estimate a terrestrial CH4 uptake (in kg CH4-C ha-1 yr-1) for montane (-4.28) and lowland forests (-3.52) and a massive CH4 release from swamp forests (non-inundated 2.68; inundated 341). All investigated forest types were a N2O source (except for inundated swamp forest) with 0.93, 1.56, 3.5, and -0.19 kg N2O-N ha-1 yr-1 for montane, lowland, non-inundated swamp, and inundated swamp forests, respectively.