Sustainable Management of Agriculture and Livestock - DRCongo

Expected impact 

The PGDA contributes to the dual impact of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, and improving quality of life. 

Objectives

• Senate and parliamentary adoption of the agricultural policy, based on a law and regulatory texts favouring implementation of a sustainable agricultural policy;
• Capacity enhancement at the national and provincial levels on appropriate policies and instruments by hiring and training technicians and agents;
• Development of a technical baseline for establishing sedentary agriculture. It will contribute to regulatory texts by identifying good practices for savannah reclamation, assisted soil fertility regeneration, and the restoration of degraded agricultural landscapes;
• A system for capitalizing on the knowledge acquired from sustainable agricultural models implementedand the tools to disseminate them on an ongoing basis;
• Mapping industrial, commercial and community farms in the provinces and developing a geo-referenced database of farm permits and related legal data; and,
• Creating an interactive platform for visualizing the agricultural land registry at the provincial and national levels.

Progress and first results (as of 30 June 2021)

Formulation of the agricultural policy  

• The first phase of diagnosis on the major stakes of the agricultural sector was organized through workshops in 13 cities of the DRC, with the participation of representatives of the central Government, the provincial Governments, the Civil Society, the Private Sector, the Organizations of Agricultural Producers and the Universities and Research Center.
• A report on the updated diagnosis of the agricultural sector and a strategic orientation note of the agricultural policy.
• The first draft of the National Sustainable Agricultural Policy has been developed and reviewed. Drafting the above policy is a major step forward - it required the establishment of an Enlarged Working Group, including the Ministries of Agriculture, Rural Development, Land Use Planning, FONAREDD and CAFI. The draft policy will be submitted to a validation process at the national level. 

Capacity building

• The Development Unit for the Agricultural Law Implementation Measures (CEMALA) has been supported to advance enforcement measures on fundamental principles related to the agricultural sector.
• A new version of the EX-ACT Carbon tool (EX-ACT9) has been developed, with a capacity building program to be deployed to state and non-state managers. About 20 Congolese experts were trained during a one-week webinar to use this suite of tools.
• A reference framework for sedentarization has been developed. 
• Memorandum of Understanding has been developed with INERA, making it possible to elaborate a guide on good agricultural practices. This will capitalize on activities  developed at the level of the provincial multi-sectoral  (PIREDD) programs.

Communications

The project increased the webmasters’ capacity at the Ministry of Agriculture, leading to the launch in April of the new Ministry of Agriculture website (https://minagri.gouv.cd/).

Sentinel posts

Memorandum of Understanding was signed that sets out the terms of collaboration between DIAF, SNSF and the GDA program, allowing the launch of activities. Sentinel posts were installed and equipped for the observation of major deforestation events in 5 territories (Masimanimba, Inongo, Bomongo, Budjala and Bumba), their facilitators officially designated and a capacity-building workshop organized. 

Progress of this programme have also been described in the 2021 semestrial publication of the DRC National REDD+ Fund – read it here (in French).

Areas of intervention

National coverage.

Synergies

• The PGDA works with the provincial multisectoral programmes (known as PIREDDs) through their agreements with the territorial inspectorates of agriculture, capacity building to develop provincial policies and the decentralized territorial entities in the context of the local development plans. 
• The PGDA is conducting an assessment of agro-ecological practices the country has implemented over the last 20 years and is incorporating them into a good practices guide for broad dissemination, particularly in the PIREDDs.  
• To ensure that deforestation alerts related to commercial plantations are verified, the programme works with the Forest Monitoring Programme (SNSF) and the Independent Observatory (to be established by the PGDA). 

This program contributes to the following milestones of the 2016 Letter of Intent between DRC and CAFI:

• Milestones 2018 A (draft agricultural policy), B (satellite monitoring system for the spatial development of commercial plantations integrated into the National Forest Monitoring System) and C (establishment of an agricultural supervision and input production/distribution system in each provincial multi-sectoral program (PIREDD); and, 
• Milestones 2020 A (adoption of an agricultural policy integrating REDD+ issues and land use planning principles) and B (updating data related to the spatial development of commercial plantations).
• Two independent verifications of these milestones were undertaken (please read the report available here).