RENA Eligibility Check: PASSED

Ecosystem: Tropical Rain Forest

Biodiversity Credits: 16,000 units BIOD single issue
Carbon Credits: 200,000 units VRCC per annum

Special Features: Bonobo (Red Listed) Habitat

Basankusu and Bolomba, Ikelemba, Equatorial Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo

These are biodiversity and carbon credits from the Community managing the Ikelemba Forests group across Basankusu and Bolomba in the Equatorial Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The GACEBB project area is located 1,050 km from the capital, Kinshasa, in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Equateur Province, in the southern part of the Basankusu territory. The forest area proposed as carbon forest comprises 119,000 hectares.

The local population is 275,000 people, mostly women and children. The people reside in 24 villages, major towns and villages being Bolima I, Lifumba-Waka and Wala.

The Basanku and Bolomba Ecosystem Conservation Support Group (GACEBB) was initiated in 2009 and formally created in 2013 by Mr John Likonga Bolola, former coordinator of the Green Cap projects of the French NGO Awely, Animals and Humans. Awely's objective is to protect the habitat of the Red List threatened species Pan paniscus (bonobo) population in the fragmented forest habitat of southern Basanku.

The GACEBB community has coordinated several successful food, conservation forestry and bonobo habitat research and protection projects over the past 13 years. They now wish to move to carbon forestry because it has great potential to achieve several of the community's objectives in food generation, forest and bonobo habitat protection, and further community development projects funded by credit revenue.

Estimated Job Generation:

Project Developers (4), Authenticators (4), Auditors (2), GIS Mappers (2), Ecologists (4), Forest Stewards (14), Credit Brokers (2), Project Managers (4), Community Development Officers (20), Cinematic & Video (4)

The Ikelemba Forest has passed the Eligibility Check for the RENA High Integrity Credit Scheme.The next step is formal Authentication of the credits with a Verification Report (also known as a Project Development Document (PDD)) prepared by the community, and a Validation Report prepared by an independent expert. Planning for Authentication field work by the local community is now underway.