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[ February is "Africa Month" on 13.7 Billion Years, focusing on biodiversity, conservation, sustainable development and ethical consumption across the continent.]Two-thirds of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is covered by forests. Considering that this central African nation is the third largest on the continent and the 12th largest in the world by area, that is a lot of forest.
All that forest also means lots of biodiversity, which provides such vital environmental services as "the regulation of climate and biogeochemical cycles, hydrological functions, soil protection, crop pollination, pest control, recreation and ecotourism," according to Norman Myers of Oxford University in his paper, "Environmental Services of Biodiversity."
Sadly, deforestation is changing that. Corporate logging and agricultural forest-clearing have been eroding these rainforests, which are critical not only to the health of the nation's local ecosystems, but also to the overall health of the entire planetary environment -- the DRC's rainforests constitute one of the Earth's largest terrestrial carbon sinks.
But now, all this logging can be better monitored and regulated -- with a look to improve forest governance and management -- thanks to the first-ever DRC Interactive Forest Atlas, a unique GIS-based mapping and information system that throws a bright light on the forest activities happening throughout the country.
Lauched last month by the non-profit World Resources Institute and the DRC's environment ministry, the atlas is "particularly innovative due to the fact that its development helped strengthen the DRC's national capacity to monitor and manage the country's forests in a sustainable, socially responsible way," said WRI Central Africa Program Manager Pierre Methot -- at the January 19 launch event in Kinshasa, according to a WRI press release.
"Its launch signifies the strong, practical efforts that have been undertaken by the DRC government in recent years to increase transparency and governance in the forest sector," Methot said.
There is a Swahili proverb that goes, "Pofu hasahau mkongoja wake" (a blind person does not forget his walking stick). With this map, government ministries, private firms, NGOs and local communities alike are no longer blind when it comes to what is happening to the DRC's critical forests.
