New RFUK report highlights the continuing lack of protected area accountability in the Congo Basin

27 November 2024

Following the latest round of negotiations over the future of biodiversity conservation efforts at COP16, a new report by RFUK urges for accountability and redress for the past and ongoing harms caused by fortress conservation programmes across the Congo Basin. ‘Righting Wrongs’ highlights the pressing need for effective, independent and sufficiently-resourced Grievance and Redress Mechanisms, as high-level commitments on rights-based conservation are failing to materialise on the ground and abuses linked to protected areas in the region may be continuing on a large scale.

Frequent reports of forced displacements and of murder and gender-based violence by Western-funded protected area rangers have put militarised ‘fortress conservation’ firmly in the spotlight in recent years, prompting various commitments from governments, funders and large conservation NGOs on human rights.

This has led to some positive developments such as new requirements for conservation projects to obtain the Free, Prior and Informed consent (FPIC) of local communities as well as for improving oversight and accountability of protected areas through vetting of park rangers and the strengthening or establishment of Grievance and Redress Mechanisms (GRMs). However, our analysis finds there is still a huge gap between commitments made on GRMs and what is happening on the ground. Among the issues highlighted in the research are:

• a lack of adequate resource mobilisation for GRMs;

• blurred lines of responsibility between conservation NGOs, donors and State authorities, leading to a culture of impunity for rights abusers;

• deep-seated mistrust between communities and project implementers; and

• a lack of public disclosure and transparency on grievance case management.

This absence of effective accountability mechanisms has real-world consequences. Only recently, the NGO CAD in the Republic of Congo reported on the physical displacement of local communities from the Ntokou Pikounda National Park despite the supposed existence of a GRM there and of social safeguard policies.

With more 200 million square kilometres of land – an area roughly the size of South America – under protected status globally, this means that human rights violations and other social harms caused by strictly protected areas–continue to go unreported, possibly on a large scale. Ensuring effective accountability to local populations is all the more vital given the global commitment under Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework to effectively double this area by 2030 (‘30x30’).

The report provides practical guidance and recommendations for conservation agencies, organisations and funders including on the need to map and recognise community land claims and resource use around protected areas; how to develop accessible, independent, culturally-appropriate and gender-sensitive mechanisms; establishing clearer links with the local judiciaries; and on the increased political and financial commitment needed to support these efforts.

Above all, however, the focus on improving the accountability of existing protected areas should not overshadow the need to fundamentally rethink how conservation programmes are designed and managed in the region. Equally substantial efforts must be directed toward developing genuinely rights-based, community-led approaches to achieving 30x30 and beyond. Such a shift would help prevent these injustices from occurring in the first place, reducing the need for GRMs, and ultimately promote a more sustainable and rights-compliant approach to conservation.

To find out more about our Sustainable Conversation and Human Rights campaign, this briefing explains why conventional conservation models need to change, what needs to be done to effect this change and how RFUK and our local and Indigenous partners work on this issue.

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