Congo Basin Peatlands Governance Project — Cuvette Centrale (DRC & Republic of Congo)

The Cuvette Centrale, spanning the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo (RoC), is the world's most extensive tropical peatland complex. A 2017 Nature study (Dargie et al.) mapped roughly 145,500 km² of peat storing an estimated 30.6 billion tonnes of carbon. Since January 2022, the IKI-funded Congo Basin Peatlands project, implemented by FAO and UNEP/GRID-Geneva with national ministries, has worked to build the governance and evidence base needed to protect this carbon store around the Lac Télé-Lac Tumba landscape.

To build cross-sectoral governance structures, hydrological and land-use monitoring capacity, and FPIC-based community engagement to protect the Cuvette Centrale's peatland carbon store in both DRC and the Republic of Congo.

The programme established eleven cross-sectoral coordination platforms, formalised National Advisory Committees in both countries, and set up Scientific Task Forces to guide hydrological and land-use monitoring, including water-table modelling. It has also trained community members in DRC and RoC in practices such as improved rice cultivation, cocoa, beekeeping and fisheries intended to reduce pressure on peat forest, under a stated Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process.

Water-table modelling in project sites recorded depths of 0.5-1.2 metres, a proxy tracked because peat dries and releases carbon when tables drop. Community engagement is reported as over 1,700 people involved (including 649 women), 120 stakeholders active across coordination platforms, and more than 2,000 farmers trained in DRC and 250 producers trained in RoC.

Independent scientists caution that the underlying carbon-stock estimate still rests on very sparse field data — only two 20-30 km transects have been surveyed across the entire Congo Basin — so monitoring, rather than final quantification, remains the project's core near-term achievement.