The case we wish to present to you is that of the Okapis Fauna Reserve (RFO) which is among the newest of the protected areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Situated in the North-eastern part of the country, the RFO covers a surface area of 13,725 km², or 20 % of the Ituri Forest (which in turn makes up a large part of the Congo Basin rainforest). The flora in the RFO is very rich, with over 700 species currently listed, 300 of which are large trees, including dominant formations of Gilbertiodendron dewevrei, Cynometra alexandri, Julbernardia seretii and Khaya anthocea. The RFO is home to major populations of several species of large mammal, including okapis, elephants, antelopes, carnivores, wart hogs, rodents, and over a dozen species of primate. The ornithological fauna is also extremely diverse, with 326 known species (Hart, personal communication, 1996). Bats are also prominent, and there are numerous species of fish in the region’s many rivers.

For many centuries, populations of Pygmy hunter-gatherers (Hambuti and Efe) have lived in the Ituri Forest, along with indigent Bantu. The most recent census, carried out in 1994 by a team led by Bryan Curran, revealed that 20,000 people lived within the Reserve’s boundaries, and another 10,000 within a radius of 15 kilometers. These people live essentially from the forest’s natural resources, which are used for various purposes (including firewood, hut building, hunting and gathering, agriculture, and even gold mining by craftsmen). The RFO was created in May 1992 for the principal purpose of conserving and sustaining the RFO region’s biological diversity, ecological systems, and productivity, as well as the ecosystems of the Ituri Forest itself, and to ensure the sustainability of a reservoir of natural resources susceptible of wise use by the local people (Stephenson, 1955).

However, the RFO’s main challenge is to determine how to reconcile the conservation of one the largest areas of still-intact tropical forest with the sustainable exploitation of its resources.

Today, it is clear that the immigration of people from the High Plateaus of Kivu and Maut-Uele, the way in which the land has been exploited since their arrival, the disruption caused to the economic systems of local cultures, the commercialization of hunting and the exploitation of gold for craft-work, and many other factors, are all very real problems for the RFO’s managers – problems that threaten the sustainable exploitation of resources. In fact, if the devastation of the Ituri Forest has thus far been kept to a level below that which would make it impossible for resources to be renewed, it is in large part due to the sparse population and to the ways in which people have traditionally exploited resources.

Recently, the above dangers have been compounded by other potential threats, in the wake of the war of liberation in the Congo and the seizure of power by the AFDL. The country has rapidly begun opening up to investors, and its natural resources are being greedily coveted. Both mining and forestry resources are in the sights of these exploiting forces, both domestic and foreign. The region of the Ituri, thought for a long time to hold deposits of precious metals such as gold and diamonds, cannot escape these attentions. Its eastern areas are currently enduring a chaotic exploitation of their timber resources at the hands both of native people and those from neighboring countries.

Can the RFO be spared this process? Can we, at this point, hope to see strong, committed institutions emerge in this country to support protected areas such as the RFO, whose goal is to preserve natural resources for people who depend on them for their survival? What forms will these institutions’ support take, given that the problems that the RFO faces are as much legal as administrative? How can these measures be put into effect, on an administrative basis, in the RFO? Should it be done within a decentralized structure? This approach is ideal for tasks such as driving back destructive animals, replacing wardens and authorizing certain practices in the Reserve, under the aegis of the Conservator (the Head of the Reserve). Or should it be done within a structure that is too highly centralized? This was the structure that prevailed with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) and which has led to the current flaws and omissions. Opening new patrol posts for the wardens, for example. How shall natural resources be best managed within the RFO?

The decision to turn part of this forest into a reserve, with the aim of sustaining ecosystems and encouraging certain ways of life for the native people, through a management system – zoning – that could ensure sustainable management of natural resources, was envisaged as a way to ensure that the region could look toward the future with confidence.

The Ituri Forest is, and always was, considered as a region open to the immigration of surplus population from the overpopulated regions of North Kivu, the Uele and the Ituri.

Agriculture, the mining of gold and other precious metals by the craft industry, large-scale elephant poaching, commercial hunting, logging, all of these activities are have been carried out under anarchic and chaotic conditions. They are the consequence of a predatory state and of the fall of national institutions, and they constitute the background to a situation that had long prevailed in the region. The situation continued to deteriorate for many years, and constituted a threat to the existence of native peoples such as the pygmies, the Bila, the Ndaka and the Lese.

The fragile predicament of the local people was shown by the deterioration in terms of trade for traditional goods that they brought to market and by the gradual dwindling of those goods due to overexploitation (Hart, From Subsistence to the Market: A Case Study of Mbuti Net-hunters, 1978). Subsequently, the immigrant population monopolized first the economic power, then the political and social power, so that native people effectively became marginalized with respect to the immigrant population.

The RFO was created in May 1992, by a Decree of the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Tourism (ECNT). Its creation did not, however, resolve the problems of the use and the exploitation of natural resources. Article 4 of the ministerial order creating the reserve stipulates that the ICCN determines the manner in which resources may be exploited, may remove certain restrictions in favor of native peoples, and may also implement management agreements with the local population. It does not specify whether, in particular instances, the ICCN designates the General Delegation in Kinshasa, or the appointed official, as the local authority within the RFO. Furthermore, activities designed to link conservation with development are not coordinated and are not implemented according to any kind of nationwide strategy. The ministerial decree also suffers from certain weaknesses: it may not repeal decrees signed by other ministries, such as those creating the gold mining, diamond mining, and even logging permits in force on the reserve. This undermines the authority of the Conservator. Furthermore, a presidential decree may, at any moment, render a ministerial decree invalid, and consequently end the existence of a reserve.

Without specifying the form or the nature of the activities permitted, the ministerial decree did nevertheless open the way for resource management by the ICCN and local communities. It thus became incumbent upon local officials to determine how resources should be exploited, and to implement their decisions on the ground. Unfortunately, it is in this area that all the problems and omissions subsequently became apparent, due to a systemic failure in the relationship between the base (the protected area) and its management (in Kinshasa), with regard to the implementation of the decisions taken and to the implementation of the law.

Looking back for a moment, it is clear that things first began to change when the Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) of the ICCN became aware of the threats to the rich bio-diversity and to the culture of the Mbuti and others. The political will of certain individuals (the then chairmen of the ICCN and the ECNT), the commitment of the Wildlife Conservation Society research team, the contributions of the World Wildlife Fund and the Congolese tobacco firm TABAZAIRE, and the collaboration of the Gilman Investment Company (GIC) all then resulted in the creation of the RFO, in 1992. The intention behind the creation of the RFO was not just to save a part of the Ituri Forest from the chaotic exploitation of its natural resources, but rather to ensure that the native people should be able to benefit from, and use in a sustainable manner, the natural resources on which they had depended for centuries for their survival.

The creation of the RFO was thus the result of a long and painful process, with the ICCN as the major catalyst. The biggest changes that needed to be made essentially reside in the reserve-management techniques outlined in the management plan. Zoning is the key word here. Zoning is a process that consists of dividing up the Reserve into various zones - one devoted to agriculture and hunting, one to hunting alone, and a number of further zones, which are devoted entirely to conservation and serve as reproduction reservoirs for animal species in order that the other two zones can be repopulated. Well before it was proposed that there should be a reserve card, animal counts and socioeconomic studies had been carried out, in order to determine the size of the large mammal population and to pinpoint areas of human activity on the reserve. This was done both to determine how resources were being used by each household and to gauge the opinions of those who lived on the reserve. After these studies were completed, local people were organized into ground-level communities, called Permanent Local Consultation Committees, or CPCLs, which were designed to participate in zone management, to serve as a link between the local population and ICCN/RFO officials, and above all to define development areas that were compatible with the goals of the conservation efforts. The CPCLs provided an excellent example of how the ICCN could work together with local communities. Together, the two partners studied problems that arose at a local level in an effort to find appropriate solutions. Those problems included cultural destruction, poaching, the definition and respect of green zones, how to drive away illegal gold prospectors from the reserve, and so on. It is foreseen that the collaboration between the CPCLs and the ICCN will lead to the creation of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (PICDs) within the reserve, whose task will be to tackle specific development problems for each community around the reserve. One project currently underway, and which reflects the collaboration between the CPCLs and the RFO, is the participation of the former in the definition of agricultural zones and the improvement of growing methods.

We should note here that the RFO also sees zoning as a way to encourage multiple uses of the soil, thus guaranteeing that the biological diversity will be maintained and the natural resources will be used in a sustainable manner way by the local people. Research carried out within the RFO, aimed at providing a count of all the large mammals and charting human activity, has led to some ad hoc map-making and a proposal for integrated conservation zones.

At this point, the introduction of zoning is still on hold, due to the events of 1996. This delay may be extended in view of the weaknesses in the national institution (or administration) responsible for the RFO, in view of the lack of coordination between the central authorities in Kinshasa and the ground-level administrative bodies (zones and local communities), and in view of the lack of material and financial resources the RFO needs to reinvigorate the project at local level. It is worthwhile noting, however, that measures are being undertaken at government level to reestablish contact with sponsors and with the conservation NGOs that backed the RFO (WCS, GIC), in an effort to ensure that the ICCN has the necessary means to make the introduction of zoning effective.

Zoning is one of the simplest ways to regulate land-use in relationship with social and governmental objectives (John Hart, personal communication). It is also considered an effective means of managing resources in a way that is compatible with conservation. The traditional model proposed for the RFO, for example, is that of the integrated conservation zone (one can have more than one such zone, depending on the degree of human activity and the disposition of mammals in the protected area), which is surrounded by exploitation zones reserved for subsistence agriculture, hunting and gathering, and other activities consistent with the sustainable use of resources. The aim of zoning is above all to establish a sort of compromise between [the need to sustain the RFO’s biological diversity –OMISSION HERE? TRANSLATOR] and the demand on natural resources from the people living within the RFO, in order that the people can be assured that they will always have access to those resources. To our knowledge, there are very few parks or reserves in sub-Saharan Africa that have implemented this management technique with much success. However, we should note that Uganda can point with pride to its own relative success with this system, which is being used there in many different ways, at Budongo Forest, Kibale National Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, and so on. Compared with the RFO, whose surface area is almost 14,000 square kilometers, these protected areas are suffering both from their small size and from the emergence of certain management problems (Fred Babyeteera, personal communication). This confirms the point that wherever zoning has faltered, it has been because relevant laws and regulations were not applied and management has failed in some way. Zoning cannot work unless it is supported by the legal and administrative structures of the country concerned, together with effective and well-thought-out management structures. NGOs can do no more than offer technical and financial aid and help to enforce local regulations. The case of the Congo (and, by extension, of the RFO), which is an extreme case, is a classic example: many well-conceived legal texts and regulations are just not being applied. The state is not able to fully play its role, which consists of supplying the reserve with competent staff and paying their wages, supporting the NGOs with a view to implementing the proposals and plans designed for the creation and management of the RFO, making applicable the texts that created, and now manage, the Reserve, and so forth. Despite these shortcomings, however, the RFO seems to be the best example of the implementation of zoning, given that the basic potential of its natural resources has remained almost intact and that it can support limited exploitation. Zoning can only reinforce the conviction of the NGOs and the ICCN with regard to what may happen in the case of unlimited exploitation of its resources. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the experience with zoning in the RFO can only be applauded, and it would be well worth while seeing how it might be applied on a larger scale in other protected areas of the country, and perhaps elsewhere in Central Africa.