Research: Focus on Deforestation in DRC May be Misplaced
Deforestation rates have been rising in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in recent years, threatening the country’s forest-dependent wildlife and releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Now, a new study may have pinpointed a big reason behind this trend: farmers clearing land to earn money. Its authors say their results upend conventional wisdom and indicate conservation programs like REDD+ tasked with slowing down tropical deforestation may not be giving enough attention to this specific driver.
The study was conducted in a deforestation hotspot in northeastern DRC by researchers from universities in the DRC and Belgium. Published recently in the journal Land Use Policy, it examined an assumption of the DRC government that subsistence farming is driving deforestation in the Central African country. But fieldwork and interviews with 270 Congolese households in 27 villages suggested this is not the case.
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/efforts-to-stop-deforestation-in-drc-may-be-misplaced-study-finds/
Ollivier Girard/CIFOR