Mai-Ndombe REDD+

Inside the project

Spanning roughly 249,000 to 300,000 hectares on former industrial logging concessions, Mai-Ndombe was one of the first REDD+ projects in the Congo Basin rainforest. Wildlife Works works with over 50,000 people through community self-governance, directing carbon revenue into locally chosen projects in health, education, clean water and sustainable agriculture.

The project shifts livelihoods away from extractive activity: former hunters became eco-guards protecting the forest, and locally hired staff run demonstration gardens, agroforestry and conservation-farming training. Hundreds of full-time conservation jobs have replaced reliance on logging and bushmeat.

Camera-trap monitoring has documented a significant rise in wildlife since 2014, including elephant sightings and young calves. The site is a stronghold for the endangered bonobo, found only in the DRC, alongside forest elephants and other Congo Basin species.

Image credit

via Wikimedia CommonsImage source ↗

Expand image

Objectives

• Prevent deforestation across former logging concessions in the Congo Basin
• Govern the project with communities and fund locally chosen development
• Protect endangered bonobos and recovering forest-elephant populations
• Replace extractive livelihoods with sustainable conservation jobs and agriculture

Approach

• Emission reductions are verified under Verra's VCS and major social and biodiversity co-benefits under CCB (Gold), with independent third-party verification. Avoided-deforestation accounting uses satellite monitoring against a baseline, complemented by camera-trap wildlife surveys and eco-guard patrols.