Supporting the Land Use Planning Reform - DRCongo

Expected results

• The DRC has a Land -Use Planning policy that supports its vision of sustainable development, based on spatial analyses that integrate the objectives of the national strategy. A Land Use Planning Law is developed that mainly focuses on sustainable development and safeguarding forest ecosystems. Both are communicated and disseminated.  
• Management structures are legally established, efficient and functional, including an intersectoral steering committee on LUP reform (COPIRAT), an LUP general secretariat and a technical support unit.
• A national LUP plan is developed and validated, as well as a functional LUP atlas and GIS to support decision-making and trade-offs to determine the best possible land uses. 
• The most appropriate sectoral models (agricultural, land, mining and environmental) are defined and promoted in each target province and decentralized territorial entity, through consultation frameworks. 
• Six methodological guides for developing planning tools at provincial and local levels are drafted, incorporate environmental and social safeguards, and are used to achieve the provincial and local LUP plans prepared by the provincial multi-sectoral programmes. 
• A ministerial capacity-building programme is implemented. 
• The Territorial Observatory has an operational geographic information and management system. 

Progress and results as of 30 June 2021

• The National Land Use Planning policy has been finalized, and adopted by the Council of Ministers.
• A first draft of the Land Use Planning law has been written and submitted to Parliament for adoption.
• The campaign to raise awareness and popularize the LUP concept is underway.
• Capacity building :
  • The Land Use Planning technical support unit is functional; it has produced a report on the legal status of the LUP sector, that describes the history of the sector’s organization and provides a general summary of the related text.
  • The Land Use Planning General Secretariat and the COPIRAT have been established. 
  • As part of the preparation of the National LUP plan:
    • Seven sectoral and intersectoral thematic groups were established. 
    • Studies on the national forest capital and agricultural potential were commissioned.
    • Provisional report of sectoral and spatial assessment and scoping has been completed and become available, on the following axes: sectoral (transport, energy, road networks, agro-rural); environmental (environmental and forest management); territorial (cities and urban systems). Such work leads to the submission of 150 recommendations.  
    • Land Use Planning consultation and data collection missions were carried out in 26 provinces and data was collected on sectoral and spatial issues in provincial development. This helped mobilize the governors, government, civil society and the private sector with the goal to validate and take ownership of planning tools and instruments in the near future. 
• The Methodological guide for the participatory zoning of village lands and territorial entities was elaborated and validated; consensus was reached on its experimentation by the target PIREDD. This guide will enable the PIREDDs to harmonize the methodological approaches to the realization of the "Simple LUP Plans" (in French “PSAT”).
• The STUDI / IDEA Consult consortium developed six draft versions of methodological guides for the elaboration of PSATs and PLATs.
• Three provincial LUP plans were validated  (Tshopo, Ituri and Bas-Uélé). The program has supported the harmonization of the approaches of the three provincial land use plans (in French “PPAT”).
• With the new government, the Land Use Planning portfolio has been elevated to a "Ministry of State", demonstrating the government's willingness to concretize the land use planning reform.

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

The programme supports developing planning instruments and building LUP capacity in the DRC’s 26 provinces. 

Synergies

One of the objectives of the 2016 Letter of Intent between the DRC and CAFI is to "develop a LUP policy that organizes and optimizes the use of land and forest resources by the national economy’s sectors, respects rights, reduces the impact on forests, reduces conflicts and ensures sustainable development at the national and local levels. " The Programme to Support Land Use Planning Reform contributes to this and to the related milestones under the "forests" and "agriculture" objectives. Two independent verifications of these milestones were undertaken (report available here).