Focus on the Virunga National Park

Virunga National Park (Parc National des Virunga, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is Africa’s oldest and most diverse park. Stretching along the Congolese border with Uganda and Rwanda, PNVi has more bird, mammal and reptile species than any other on the continent. But for the past two decades, the park and the surrounding area in North Kivu province have experienced near-constant violent conflict. For the local population, the result has been widespread suffering: death, rape, displacement, sickness and starvation. Between August 1998 and April 2007, more people died from this conflict than from any war since the Second World War. Most of the casualties were civilians, and almost half children.

Beyond the humanitarian crisis, conflict has threatened the species, habitats and communities that depend on PNVi for their survival. The park is in crisis: its governance systems have collapsed; its boundaries are encroached upon by the surrounding local and refugee populations; its habitats are being destroyed by overfishing and charcoal production; and its animals are killed for meat and ivory.

Conflict has also significantly contributed to the fact that the UN’s environmental conventions are not able to achieve their stated objectives in the park. Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), designed to protect such globally-significant ecosystems, have thus far been unable to address the threats to the park. Despite the proliferation of relevant environmental conventions and the DRC’s participation in them, environmental destruction continues in PNVi.  
Using PNVi and the Great Lakes conflicts as a case study, this paper analyzes where entry points exist for policy-makers and conservationists to use five existing international environmental agreements to better protect biodiversity and ecosystems in times of conflict: UNESCO WHC, CBD, CMS, CITES and Ramsar. While not an exhaustive study, the paper identifies some of the shortcomings of existing agreements, where entry points might exist and what other international policy instruments and fora could be used to help protect important ecosystems like PNVi.  
The UN MEAs are not designed or expected to offer practical solutions to conservation crises on the ground; it is up to the national governments of the signatory states, and their conservation authority, to enforce and achieve Convention goals. Their sovereignty must be respected by the other parties. However the MEAs, their COPs and their Secretariats can help them do so by building capacity, improving information gathering (i.e., the IPCC model) and supporting underfunded budgets. This analysis reveals a number of specific opportunities for elevating environment-conflict issues to international policy levels to help save important ecosystems in times of conflict.

MEAs, Conservation and Conflict – A case study of Virunga National Park, DRC
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First, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention (WHC) directly addresses the conservation challenges faced by countries in or emerging from conflict. Inclusion on the World Heritage List has proven critical in focusing international attention on ecosystems of global significance and entitles the State Party concerned to a wide range of support from UNESCO to help protect and monitor the site. Placing a site on the List of World Heritage in Danger is usually the first recourse in trying to protect it from conflict; it focuses widespread international attention on an ecosystem of global significance (and responsibility) whose survival is threatened by conflict, and hopefully mobilizes action. Moreover, it allows parties to access the World Heritage Fund. Although the Fund has proven inadequate to meeting full resource needs, the DRC, as a Party to the Convention, can resort to the Convention’s governing body, the General Assembly of State Parties to the World Heritage Convention, to make the case for increased financial support. 
Second, with regards to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), field consultations indicate that the CBD is not seen as a particularly strong tool for the promotion of transboundary cooperation. But improved action on transboundary natural resource management in the region, supported by the Convention, could help park authorities on all sides of the border deal with some of the impacts of conflict on the various components of the shared ecosystem (fisheries, species, charcoal movements, etc.). There are a number of important entry points and resources under the auspices of the CBD through and with which the DRC can raise the challenges conflict poses to park conservation. These relate to the ongoing work by the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the CBD Secretariat and Contracting Parties to develop and test mechanisms for assessing CBD implementation challenges. In addition, the DRC would be eligible for GEF support for CBD implementation activities. As well, the DRC could benefit from ongoing efforts undertaken by the World Heritage Centre and the CBD Secretariat to support implementation of the CBD’s Programme of Work on Protected Areas (CBD PoWPA) in natural World Heritage Sites. 
Third, the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species has proven to be an important catalyst for deepening transboundary cooperation among the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda. Key lessons include the importance of forging agreements at the level closest to the environment-conflict challenge in question and the need for robust cooperative mechanisms to address conservation challenges (such as the conservation of the mountain gorilla) that no one range state could address alone. 
Fourth, the DRC’s implementation experience with CITES reveals less of a success story. On the ground, anti-poaching enforcement has collapsed and this has been exacerbated by significant increases in corruption after two decades of conflict. Once again this is an example of the very context-specific challenges that states in post-conflict recovery must face in MEA implementation.

Nevertheless, like the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species, CITES provides important opportunities for the DRC to deepen its environmental cooperation with neighbouring states.

 
Fifth, the Wetlands Protection Convention could provide much-needed resources for the DRC in the protection of its Ramsar sites. And like the WHC and CITES, Ramsar could be an important catalyst for strengthening transboundary cooperation in order to mitigate the environmental impacts of conflict in the region, specifically relating to the Lake Edward ecosystem. In addition, the Convention and its Secretariat could be used to promote sustainable fishing on the lake.

 
Equally important alongside the MEA-specific entry points are other international and African policy instruments and forums, which provide immediate opportunities for the DRC to raise environmental conflict concerns: 
First, the DRC should engage the recently established UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) to assist in integrating environmental concerns and challenges into its post-conflict recovery and reconstruction. The PBC could play a catalytic role in bringing all the relevant actors, i.e. local, national, regional and international civil society organizations, together with international donors, international financial institutions and troop contributing countries, in order to address how best to integrate environmental conflict concerns into the larger challenge of disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, resettlement and reintegration processes.

 
Second, the DRC could use the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially the Annual Ministerial Review (under the auspices of ECOSOC) to highlight how a lack of access to safe energy is undermining its ability to meet all of the relevant MDGs. There is no specific energy target under any of the MDGs and the DRC could explore promoting an energy-for-cooking target that would help to improve the affordability, availability and safety of cooking fuels and practices.

 
Third, the increasing receptivity of the UN Security Council to considering environmental security threats is another political track that is ripe with opportunities for the DRC. Building on the 2007 special debate on climate security, the DRC could explore the possibility of mobilizing support for an African Union resolution to call for a second debate on environment and security within the Security Council. The debate could focus on the two-way relationship between the environment and conflict (environment as it affects and is affected by conflict), framed by the current humanitarian crisis in the eastern DRC.

 
One of the most promising tracks within which the DRC could elevate environmental concerns is through UNEP’s Post Conflict and Disaster Management Branch (PCDMB). In 2007, a UNEP mission to the DRC concluded that, while the situation in the PNVi remains very difficult, carrying out a post-conflict environmental assessment in the DRC should be a top priority for UNEP.

At the African level, there are many political tracks through which DRC environmental conflict concerns can be raised. The most promising is through the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), which is the highest regional policy-making body on the environment in Africa. Since a particular focus of AMCEN is directed to the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), this is indeed the most pertinent forum in which the DRC can raise the implementation challenges that are specific to post-conflict states.