What is the threat to the forest?
The threat to the forest in logging concessions in the Mai Ndombe is a form of planned deforestation that has come to be known as the cascade of deforestation. It begins with legal logging, then illegal logging, and finally communities clearing remaining forest for farming. The Mai Ndombe REDD+ project area comprises two such threatened forest concessions along the western shore of Lake Mai Ndombe, totaling over 250,000 ha of rainforest that were actively being logged in the early 2000s. In 2008, following a governmental revision of the DRC National Forest Code, 91 of 156 logging contracts were suspended in an effort to address corruption in the sector.
Minimum legal and environmental standards were not being met, which resulted in severe environmental damage. Furthermore, communities in these areas were largely ignored by the logging companies, and received little or no economic benefit.
Two timber concessions extending along the western shore of Lake Mai Ndombe, were among those suspended for review. This suspension was never a permanent cancellation and the subsequent moratorium was only on new logging concessions.
So while the concessions were suspended, in February 2010, Ecosystem Restoration Associates (ERA), a Canadian forest restoration company, took the opportunity to submit a formal request to the DRC government to conserve these concessions. The submission proposed something radical for the DRC: using carbon revenues to promote environmental conservation and sustainable development, thereby protecting the area from destructive logging practices, legal and illegal. This submission was granted under an exception in the new Forest Code that allowed suspended concessions to be awarded without competitive bidding by the logging sector, if the award was of high environmental and community benefit.
ERA then reached out to Wildlife Works to help them design a REDD+ project and we entered a joint venture with ERA to do so. The joint venture was in place until 2014 when Wildlife Works bought out ERA and became the sole operator of the project.
Other suspended forestry concessions were subsequently re-awarded to logging companies. This demonstrates that the forestry concessions that now comprise the Mai Ndombe REDD+ project also would have been logged.
Has deforestation been completely stopped in the project area?
No but it has reduced significantly because we displaced the primary driver of commercial logging. Because Wildlife Works does not actively restrict the activities of the communities, some deforestation continues. Our conservation strategy is founded on holistically partnering with the local communities who then choose to protect their surrounding forest to earn carbon revenues to fund their self-determined social and economic development plans. Development projects take time to implement and reach all of the communities in the entire project area and zone, especially during the funding gap between project start date and issuance and purchase of credits.
Completely stopping deforestation is an unrealistic goal when people live within and around a forest. Deforestation continues to occur within the project accounting area and we have always reported that in order to conduct the most accurate GHG accounting using the best scientific tools available to us.
Decreasing the rate of deforestation in the project area is the expected goal. REDD+ Projects are “pay per performance”, which means that any emissions from deforestation in the project accounting area (crediting area) that continue to occur during the project are subtracted from the project baseline as part of the GHG accounting process. In short, the more residual deforestation, the less credits the project receives.
The project has proven to reduce deforestation significantly against its validated baseline every year since the start of the project because we displaced the primary driver of commercial logging and the community development investments have helped to curb the communities’ reliance on extraction. Independent, third-party verification audits for this performance period confirm these results. Prior to Wildlife Works’ conservation project, forest elephants hadn’t been seen in the area in decades. With the protection of the forest, they returned and today, the local elephant population is recovering well.
What was the reference area used to develop the baseline?
The Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project is defined under VCS activity categories as "Avoiding Planned Deforestation" (APD). Avoiding deforestation under REDD+ projects involves protecting intact forests that are under threat, but that have not yet been cleared.
This category is applicable because the project intervention is focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by preventing deforestation in areas that were legally authorized and documented for conversion to non-forest land, specifically through commercial timber harvest. The baseline (without-project) scenario is described by the “cascade of deforestation”, which refers to the sequence of environmental degradation that would likely occur if the project activities were not implemented. This scenario anticipates the following sequence:
Commercial Logging: Legal logging by the primary agents opens up the forest, removing valuable timber and creating access for further exploitation.
Infrastructure Development: Roads and other infrastructure built for logging increase forest fragmentation and accessibility.
Increased Access and Illegal Activities: Easier access leads to illegal logging and encroachment, exacerbating forest degradation.
Agricultural Expansion: Cleared and accessible areas are then converted to agriculture by secondary agents, completing the process of conversion to non-forest (deforestation).
To solve the problem of measuring what would have happened without the project, a reference area must be established to determine the rate that similar areas were deforested. For REDD+ projects, the reference area never overlaps with the project area. This is because the project area, by its very definition, consists of remaining intact forest to be conserved.
For cases of planned deforestation (e.g. logging concessions) the most accurate reference area is likely to be another logging concession operated by the same company in the same general area with similar characteristics.
Given the project activity category (APD) and the baseline scenario (cascade of degradation), the reference area for the Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project was selected based on key attributes that ensure it accurately reflects the potential deforestation and environmental impacts the project area would face without intervention, and was required to meet the following strict criteria:
Same Logging Company: The reference area was managed by the same company responsible for logging in the project area, ensuring consistent forestry practices in both locations.
Planned Deforestation: Both areas were slated for planned commercial logging by the primary agent, providing a direct comparison for assessing the impact of the project's conservation efforts.
Ecological Similarity: The reference area shares similar ecological characteristics, including valuable tree species with the project area, which is crucial for making accurate counter-factual inference.
Impact Evaluation: Serving as a control site, the reference area allows for effective measurement of the project's success in reducing deforestation and carbon emissions.
The reference area, approximately 600 km southwest of the project area, was selected because it experienced planned commercial harvest similar to what would have occurred in the project accounting area in the baseline scenario. In particular, the logging company SOFORMA was granted a logging concession with boundaries identical to those of the reference area, harvested the merchantable trees, and enabled a cascade of deforestation (carried out by secondary agents of deforestation) that led to nearly complete deforestation of the reference area. It should be noted that SOFORMA stands for “La Société Forestière du Mayombe”, and the company was originally formed for the express purpose of logging the Mayombe forest (Thompson and Adloff, 1960). In addition to the planned commercial harvest, the reference area is similar to the project area with respect to ecosystem type, landscape configuration (elevation, slope, etc.), and the socio-economic conditions of local communities. Finally, the reference area is located in the DRC, so the commercial harvest and subsequent logging are subject to the same laws and enforcement as the project area.
Why did the baseline change?
The baseline represents the counterfactual scenario of what would have happened in the absence of the project. Wildlife Works endeavors to reduce projected deforestation based on a scientifically determined and independently audited baseline.
Our project baseline initially reflected the actual annual emissions that occurred in the reference area concession over a 30-year period, which is non-linear: starting slowly when legal logging began, and then accelerating when illegal logging followed and further accelerating as communities cleared the remnant forests after logging was finished in a process now well-known as the “cascade of deforestation.”
The Mai Ndombe project switched to an allocated baseline initially based on the World Bank ER Program for the Province of Mai Ndombe for 2021-2023 and will switch again to a baseline approved by the National REDD+ program after 2023. The result is a different baseline to our originally audited and validated project baseline and reflects the difference between the two philosophical approaches to allocating baselines, and in no way reflects the scientific accuracy in the original baseline.
That difference can be summarized as such: project baselines reflect specific local risks to the project forests, based on actual historical deforestation in a reference area. Jurisdictional baselines use an average of historical deforestation across the entire jurisdiction to calculate the jurisdictional baseline. Then a portion of that baseline is allocated to projects nested within the jurisdictional program. Mai Ndombe used a risk-based allocation model. Learn more about risk-based allocation in our DRC Best Practices Guide. However because this project was an avoided planned deforestation project with risk defined by a specific logging company’s behavior in a specific reference concession, it is impossible for an unplanned deforestation allocation model to result in a baseline comparable to the original project baseline. This doesn’t make one good or one bad, they are just different philosophical approaches, and the advantages of the jurisdictional approach are that the National REDD+ system ensures consistency across all projects.
Both approaches use remote sensing. Remote sensing is usually more accurate at the project scale than at larger jurisdictional scale because at the project scale every pixel of forest loss can be identified and manually verified. Larger jurisdictional programs often have to use sampling techniques because it is too expensive and time intensive to assess every pixel in the entire jurisdiction.
Wildlife Works monitors, measures, and reports deforestation everywhere it occurs at the Landsat pixel level (30m x 30m) and deducts any emissions associated with that deforestation from our project performance. The project has been independently verified to have achieved substantial reductions in deforestation against its applicable baseline.
How is leakage addressed?
Activity-shifting and market leakage were directly addressed and the applicability of both were evaluated by the VVB at project validation, per the VCS accreditation process. It was determined by an experienced accredited VVB that both were non-applicable to the Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project Approval with these justifications:
Activity-Shifting Leakage: It is not applicable because secondary agents (those indirectly affected by project activities) do not have the mobility or access to migrate their activities to other forested areas. The areas around the project have already been converted to agriculture up to the limits of these agents' reach, thus making further deforestation unlikely.
Market-Effects Leakage: This type of leakage is also considered non-applicable. The primary agent, SOFORMA, could not be granted a new concession within the national boundary because there was a moratorium on NEW concessions that is still in place 15 years later, and they were already logging their other concessions to the maximum allowable extent. Therefore, there is no potential for this agent to increase logging activities elsewhere to compensate for reductions within the project area.
These justifications emphasize that under the current conditions and constraints, both activity-shifting and market-effects leakages were deemed inapplicable during the project’s design validation. As such, neither were calculated ex-post throughout the current baseline validity period. *note: Since 2021, Verra has started requiring the project to calculate and discount for activity-shifting leakage
Proxy Area:
The proxy area location was closely evaluated at project validation by the VVB and determined to be not only in compliance with methodological and standards criteria, but conservatively selected:
Definition Compliance: The proxy area complies with the project's definition of “non-forest,” which aligns with a refined definition that includes specific land use types like "forêt secondaire" (secondary forest). This secondary forest consists mainly of agricultural fields interspersed with residual tree cover, which are not considered forested under the project's criteria.
Methodological Requirements: The selection adheres to the methodology VM0009, which specifies that the proxy area should represent an area not forested as of the project start date and is used to estimate residual carbon stocks in the baseline scenario.
Conservative Approach: By including secondary forest in the proxy area and excising those areas from the project accounting area, the proxy area provides a conservative estimate of the baseline carbon stocks, ensuring that the project does not overclaim carbon credits.
The reason the proxy area appears fragmented is not because certain forest types were excluded, but because the selection criteria stipulates that the proxy area only contain non-forest.
Who are the legal landowners?
The government of the DRC owns the forested land under the concessions to the forest. The local communities have customary usage rights to the forest. Wildlife Works has worked with the communities to map traditional community territories.
How do you ensure that everyone in the project area is engaged with the project?
The Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project spans 28 villages of various sizes. When the project was being designed 11 years ago, Wildlife Works/ERA Congo obtained written permission from each village, in line with the government’s requirements of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).
Wildlife Works’ REDD+ projects follow the Cancun Safeguards for Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), a process protected by international human rights standards that states, ‘all peoples have the right to self-determination’ and ‘all peoples have the right to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’
Through the FPIC process, communities co-created and signed a document known as the Cahiers de Charge, which states the agreed-upon activities that the project will fund. By signing this document, community members gave their clear consent to develop a REDD+ project in their customary lands. Wildlife Works employees have close communications with community leaders and democratically elected community representatives through the “Local Development Committees” during the implementation of the project and its activities. This process enables community members to contribute to project design, air grievances, and give or withhold their consent at any point .
There are over 50,000 community members within the project zone, so it should be expected that each village and each individual will have varying degrees of knowledge and direct interaction with the project. Due to limited funding at the start of the project, Wildlife Works was only able to start project activities one village at a time. As project funding grew with credit sales, more villages were able to fund their investment plans. At the end of 2023, all the villages’ Cahiers de Charge have now been fulfilled and the villages’ democratically elected “Local Development Committees” are developing plans for future funding. Meanwhile, we have a dedicated and ongoing effort to engage with all community members. As carbon sales increase, communities will be able to fund more of their own development goals. Stay updated on the latest impacts on the Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project page, signing up for our newsletters and following our social channels and you tube channel.
How long did the FPIC process take to complete?
While the length of the FPIC process can vary due to the nuances of the local culture and government, the initial phases of informing communities about the potential projects take no less than 3 months, and can take up to one year and sometimes more. In the case of Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project, the FPIC process took over one year.
Wildlife Works’ REDD+ projects follow the Cancun Safeguards for Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), a process protected by international human rights standards that states, ‘all peoples have the right to self-determination’ and ‘all peoples have the right to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’
Some key features of our FPIC process include:
We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the risks to, and potential (negative) impacts on, various stakeholders and proposed mitigation plans.
We provide communities with complete information on the purpose, nature, scale and duration of the project activities
This includes information on the planned stakeholder engagement process (e.g., times and venues of public consultation meetings), grievance-registering and management procedures, and opportunities and means by which they can participate.
We conduct thorough FPIC during the feasibility phase, before any contracts are signed to establish the project. Our FPIC process includes conducting extensive community outreach and sensitization to community members, in a user-friendly and culturally fitting manner, free of manipulation, interference, coercion and intimidation. If the community partners agree to start the project, FPIC continues throughout the entire life cycle of the project.
We implement continuous and meaningful consultation with all project stakeholders, including marginalized groups within the local community.
We use an effective and culturally appropriate procedure for which people can provide feedback and complaints.
We provide communities with timely disclosure of appropriate information.
We believe FPIC is a continuous process, and does not end once communities give their consent for the start of a project.
Wildlife Works representatives are recognized experts in the FPIC process and co-authored the DRC Best Practices Guide for REDD+ which includes extensive information on the legal and culturally required FPIC process.
