Ibi-Batéké Carbon Sink Plantation — Claims vs. Delivered Results (DR Congo)

Ibi-Batéké, on the Bateke Plateau near Mbankana (about 140km from Kinshasa on Route Nationale 1), was registered in the mid-2000s as the Democratic Republic of Congo's first Clean Development Mechanism afforestation project, developed by the Congolese company Novacel S.A. under director Olivier Mushiete, with pre-financing from the World Bank's BioCarbon Fund and the French carbon company Orbeo, plus loans from Umicore and Suez.

The project was promoted internationally — including in a 2011 World Bank feature headlined 'Congo community to use carbon payment to put kids through school' — as a model plantation that would establish 4,200 hectares of acacia, eucalyptus and pine (plus 230 hectares of native species restoration) to supply sustainable charcoal to Kinshasa, sequester an estimated 2.4 million tonnes of CO2 over 30 years, and create more than 450 jobs.

A 2013 assessment reported in the World Rainforest Movement's bulletin, drawing on a BioCarbon Fund evaluation, found the results fell far short: only about 1,012 hectares had actually been planted (roughly 25% of the original target), the net carbon balance was close to zero by the end of 2012, and no carbon credits had ever been verified or sold despite the project being formally validated under the CDM — the original goal of 500,000 credits had already been revised down to 80,000 by 2012. Novacel was reported to be chronically undercapitalised, kept afloat mainly by cassava sales rather than the anticipated charcoal revenue, which undermined the replanting needed to sustain any future carbon claims.

Separately, researchers and indigenous-rights organisations, including a case study by the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, documented that Novacel's director had obtained formal title to roughly 8,000 hectares by converting customary land into private property, land to which Batwa (Pygmy) communities held pre-existing customary claims, and reported resulting labour and land-rights grievances.

Ibi-Batéké is documented here as a cautionary case: the planting, carbon and job figures used to market the project internationally were substantially larger than what independent, later assessment found had actually been delivered, and the land-tenure process it relied on is reported to have displaced competing indigenous claims.

Read the full analysis: https://ejatlas.org/conflict/ibi-bateke-carbon-sink-plantation-drc