Environmental Defenders (ED) warmly welcomes a historic milestone in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the President of the DRC has signed into law the country’s first-ever national land-use planning legislation. This groundbreaking law (Law No. 25/045 of July 1, 2025) marks a victory for community-centered land governance and sustainable development in one of the world’s most biodiverse nations. Environmental Defenders applauds President Félix Tshisekedi and the DRC government for this bold step, which places local communities and Indigenous Peoples at the heart of land management and conservation efforts.
The new Land-Use Planning Law comes at a critical time for the DRC’s people and ecosystems. The DRC is home to 60% of the Congo Basin’s tropical forests, the largest carbon sink in the world.Millions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities depend on these forests for their livelihoods and cultural survival. Yet for decades, the country lacked a legal framework for land-use planning—a void that fueled overlapping land conflicts, accelerating deforestation, and insecurity, especially among marginalized groups.The absence of clear land governance not only threatened biodiversity but also undermined the rights and safety of forest-dependent communities.
By enacting this law, the DRC has charted a new, inclusive path forward. The legislation establishes a national land-use system built on participation, rights, and environmental stewardship. Crucially, the law’s development itself was highly inclusive: it was informed by extensive consultations at the local, provincial, and national levels, enabling communities to directly shape the law’s vision and content.
For Indigenous Peoples and local communities across the DRC, from the tropical forests of Équateur to the savannas of Katanga, the law represents formal recognition of their role as stewards of the land. It offers hope for more secure land tenure, reduced conflict, and stronger protection of both human rights and the environment. Given the DRC’s pivotal role in the regional and global climate (the Congo Basin forest stores billions of tons of carbon), this milestone also carries implications far beyond the country’s borders. By empowering those who have long safeguarded the forests, inclusive land governance in the DRC has the potential to foster climate resilience from the ground up.
The Land-Use Planning Law introduces several progressive provisions that strengthen community land rights and align land governance with sustainable development and climate goals.
Some of the key features of the new law include:
Recognition of Customary Land Rights: For the first time in DRC’s history, the law explicitly acknowledges community customary land rights within the national land-use framework. This means Indigenous and local communities’ traditional land claims have legal standing, a fundamental shift toward securing tenure for those who have generational ties to the land.
Decentralized, Inclusive Planning: The law mandates a bottom-up land-use planning approach that empowers local actors. Communities will participate in co-creating land-use plans for their areas, rather than having them imposed from above. This inclusive planning process ensures that development decisions consider local needs, knowledge, and conservation priorities.
Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC): In a major win for community rights, the law requires that communities be consulted and provide their consent before any project or activity affecting their lands can proceed. This enshrines the principle of FPIC in national law—meaning Indigenous Peoples and local residents have the right to approve or veto land allocations, logging, mining, agribusiness, or other projects on their customary lands. This safeguard prevents land grabbing and forced evictions, guaranteeing that development does not come at the cost of the land’s occupants.
Conflict Resolution and Policy Coordination: The legislation introduces clear guidelines to harmonize sectoral policies and resolve land-use conflicts. This framework will help different government agencies and stakeholders work from a unified plan in a country where mining, forestry, agriculture, and conservation interests often overlap chaotically. By reducing contradictory land allocations and improving coordination, the law aims to preempt conflicts over land and natural resources.
Environmental Protections: To uphold the DRC’s conservation commitments, the law requires thorough environmental impact assessments for proposed land uses and provides special protections for ecologically sensitive areas like wetlands and peatlands. Notably, the law reinforces the idea that protecting the environment and securing community land rights are interdependent, as many of these sensitive ecosystems overlap with community territories. By preserving critical habitats under a land-use plan, the DRC can better prevent deforestation and biodiversity loss while supporting community development.
These provisions collectively align land governance with climate and conservation goals. The law empowers the very groups that have proven to be effective custodians of forests by recognizing customary rights and requiring community consent. Research has indicated that when Indigenous and local communities have legal land rights, deforestation rates often decline and forest health improves, contributing to global climate mitigation efforts. The DRC’s new law embodies this insight by legally centering communities in land management decisions.
This landmark reform did not happen overnight. It is the culmination of years of persistent advocacy by Congolese civil society, Indigenous peoples’ organizations, and their international partners. A broad coalition of local groups, including the Centre for Innovative Technologies and Sustainable Development (CTIDD), the Coalition of Women Leaders for Environment and Sustainable Development (CFLEDD), the Congolese Resources Institute (CRI), the Center for Support of Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests (CAGDFT), Congo-Watch, Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autochtones (DGPA), APEM, Rain Forest Foundation UK, and Greenpeace, among others, championed the cause of an inclusive land-use law. With technical and financial support from international allies such as Syncroncity Earth, Well Grounded, the Forest People Program, the Global Greengrants Fund, Environmental Defenders, the Tenure Facility, TropenBos International, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), and other partners, they worked tirelessly to ensure the law would meet the needs of communities and conservation.
Their advocacy began as far back as 2018, when the DRC embarked on a reform process for land-use planning. Civil society experts organized consultations, provided research on community land rights, and engaged directly with government ministries and parliament to shape the policy. These efforts paid off when the National Assembly passed the bill in October 2023, followed by Senate approval. At each stage, activists pushed for stronger provisions—from the inclusion of FPIC to the recognition of Indigenous Pygmy Peoples’ land rights—turning the bill into a truly progressive instrument. At each stage, activists pushed for stronger provisions, from the inclusion of FPIC to the recognition of Indigenous Pygmy Peoples’ land rights, turning the bill into a truly progressive instrument.
Patrick Kipalu, Africa Program Director at RRI, described the coalition’s aim as “ensuring a progressive reform that enables community tenure security,” noting that “the new law focuses on modernizing territorial governance and ensuring the country’s sustainable development” .The successful passage and now promulgation of the law stand as a testament to what can be achieved when civil society, Indigenous leaders, and government reformers work together. Environmental Defenders is proud to have collaborated within this broader movement advocating for community land rights and conservation in the DRC. Alongside our partners, we have witnessed how sustained engagement, workshops, policy dialogues, and grassroots mobilization helped bring about this historic outcome.
Notably, the DRC’s land-use planning reform aligns with international climate and conservation initiatives. For example, the REDD+ program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) has been cited as a catalyst for policy reforms like this new land-use law in the DRC. Through the integration of global support and local advocacy, the DRC has demonstrated the ability to inform environmental policy both internationally and locally. The “Loi Loando” (as some have nicknamed the law, after the Minister of Land Management) is thus not only a national achievement but part of a broader effort to combat deforestation and strengthen land tenure across the Congo Basin region.
Safeguarding Communities and Ecosystems: The Impact of the Law
For Indigenous communities like the Batwa (Pygmy) peoples and countless rural villagers across the DRC, the Land-Use Planning Law offers new hope for justice and empowerment. In the past, these communities often saw their ancestral lands allocated to logging concessions, mining companies, or conservation projects without their consent, leading to displacement, loss of livelihoods, and human rights abuses. Women environmental defenders, in particular, have faced threats and violence when standing up for land rights in the DRC’s forests. Environmental Defenders has documented how Indigenous leaders advocating for their ancestral lands were frequently harassed or even labeled as criminals under the old system of opaque land deals. This new law directly addresses those injustices by mandating community participation and consent in land allocation decisions.
By securing customary land rights in law, the DRC is empowering communities to become long-term guardians of their territories. Local people can now more confidently invest in sustainable livelihoods, such as agroforestry, community forestry, or ecotourism, knowing their land claims have legal protection. As communities gain more control over the use of their land, this is likely to improve livelihoods and food security in remote areas. It also formalizes their role in protecting critical ecosystems. Many Congolese communities have traditional rules for managing forests and water sources; under the new law, their ecological knowledge and management practices can be incorporated into official land-use plans.
The law has the potential to improve conservation outcomes from an environmental perspective. The DRC’s forests host endangered species found nowhere else (like okapis, forest elephants, and bonobos) and are a bulwark against global warming. Inclusive land-use planning will help identify and safeguard high-value conservation areas—for example, peatland swamps that store vast carbon stocks—while preventing destructive activities in those areas. By requiring environmental impact assessments and giving communities a say, the law makes it harder for unsustainable projects to slip through. This is a significant change in a country where, historically, weak governance allowed harmful mining and logging practices to proliferate. As a result, we can expect more resilient ecosystems and reduced deforestation in the coming years, provided the law is implemented effectively.
Equally important, the law promises to improve governance and reduce conflict. Land disputes have been a persistent source of tension and sometimes violence in the DRC, often due to overlapping claims and lack of coordination among government agencies. The new framework to harmonize sectoral policies and resolve conflicts will benefit not just communities but also investors and conservationists by creating clearer rules and transparency. Over time, better land governance can contribute to peace and stability in fragile regions. It underscores that environmental protection and human rights go hand in hand, a core principle that Environmental Defenders promotes in all our programs.
Guy Loando Mboyo, the Minister of Land Management who championed the bill, called the new law “historique” (historic) and emphasized that it aims to organize the national territory for the benefit of all citizens. The DRC’s example could inspire neighboring countries in the Congo Basin to adopt similar inclusive approaches. As the world battles climate change and biodiversity loss, the DRC has delivered a message: empowering Indigenous and local communities is a smart and just strategy for protecting nature.
Turning Law into Reality: Implementation Obstacles and Next Steps
While we celebrate this achievement, passing the law is just the first step. The real test lies in its implementation. For the Land-Use Planning Law to truly transform realities on the ground, a concerted effort will be needed from all stakeholders in the months and years ahead. The legislation mandates synchronized efforts across all tiers of government—national, provincial, and local—to formulate and implement the new land-use plans. This necessitates substantial political commitment, sufficient financial resources, specialized technical knowledge, and effective monitoring systems.
One immediate priority is to develop implementing regulations and guidelines so that government agencies and communities have clarity on how to apply the law. Training programs will be essential to build capacity among local officials, community leaders, and customary chiefs on participatory mapping, land-use planning techniques, and conflict resolution. The DRC’s Ministry of Land Management will need support to roll out community-based land-use planning in each province, ensuring that the inclusive process envisioned by the law becomes a reality on the ground.
Crucially, civil society, including Environmental Defenders and our partners, must remain engaged as watchdogs and collaborators during implementation. Many of the same organizations that fought for the law’s passage will now focus on holding institutions accountable and supporting communities in using the law to defend their rights. This means continuing advocacy for transparency in how land concessions are granted, helping communities register their customary lands, and providing legal aid when disputes arise. Environmental Defenders, for instance, will expand our support for local communities in mapping their lands and filing for recognition of their customary tenure. We will also persist in providing training on free, prior, and informed consent processes, enabling villagers to assert their new rights when companies or projects approach them.
Another key step will be the adoption of the pending National Land Law, which is currently under revision. While the land-use planning law plays a significant role, updating the broader land law to align with the new principles is also necessary to fully secure community land tenure. ED echoes the call of our partners for the DRC Parliament to urgently pass the revised National Land Law to fill legal gaps and bolster protections for community lands. Together, these laws would provide a comprehensive legal shield for Indigenous and local communities, covering both the planning of land use and the underlying ownership and tenure rights.
All stakeholders, including government ministries, traditional authorities, international donors, and private sector actors, play a role in this implementation phase. The DRC’s international partners can assist by providing technical expertise and funding to support community mapping, land use plan development, and conflict mediation mechanisms. Donors and conservation organizations, for example, can invest in community forestry initiatives that operationalize the new law’s provisions on the ground. The private sector, for its part, must adjust to the new requirements, seeking consent and conducting proper environmental assessments for any land-based investments. This cultural shift toward respect for community rights will be essential for the law’s success.
Environmental Defenders is committed to collaborating with the DRC government and local communities to translate this law into tangible change. We will continue to provide security training, legal support, and advocacy for Indigenous environmental defenders and community leaders, ensuring they can safely engage in land-use decision-making. We will also use our community media (such as Radio Terra) to raise awareness about the new law across remote areas so that even marginalized groups are informed of their rights and the avenues to claim them. The law’s spirit is inclusive and bottom-up, so its implementation must be too.
A New Chapter for the DRC: Pioneering Inclusive Land Governance
The promulgation of the Land-Use Planning Law is, without question, a turning point for land governance in the DRC. It paves the way for more equitable and sustainable development, showing how participatory policymaking can transform long-standing challenges like deforestation and rural poverty. This achievement belongs first and foremost to the communities and activists in the DRC who envisioned a better future for their land and fought to make it happen. It also reflects a growing recognition globally that empowering Indigenous Peoples and local communities is one of the best strategies to protect the environment.
As we celebrate this victory, we remain aware that the journey is far from over. Implementing the law will require perseverance and unity of purpose. But the foundation has been laid for a just and sustainable path forward. Environmental Defenders stands alongside the people of the DRC, ready to support and ensure this law delivers on its promises, from the depths of the Ituri forest to the communities on the shores of Lake Kivu.
In a world grappling with climate change and biodiversity loss, the DRC’s commitment to inclusive land governance shines as a hopeful sign. We urge other nations to take note of this precedent. By placing land back into the hands of those who nurture it, the DRC is investing in a future where people and nature thrive together. Today, we join our fellow environmental and human rights defenders in congratulating the DRC on this historic step, and we look forward to the positive transformations it will bring for Congo’s forests and forest peoples in the years to come.
Environmental Defenders will continue to update on the implementation of the Land-Use Planning Law and work collaboratively to ensure that this legal victory translates into real-world benefits for communities, wildlife, and the climate. Together with our partners, we remain committed to defending the rights of nature and those who protect it, heralding a new chapter of hope for the Congo Basin and beyond.