Question

The Impacts of Data deficiency on Conservation Management in Democratic Republic of Congo. What are the solutions.

Answer 1

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Abstract

With a surface area equivalent to that of Western Europe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa.

While its poverty rate has fallen slightly over the past two decades, particularly in rural areas, the DRC nonetheless remains one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2018, 72% of the population, especially in the North West and Kasaï regions, was living in extreme poverty on less than $1.90 a day.

Natural resource management in the DRC is severely handicapped by a profound absence of data. Institutionalized data collection systems started to collapse from the mid-1970s, and almost completely ceased to function in the wake of widespread rioting in 1990-1993 and the subsequent conflicts due to personnel abandonment and looting of monitoring stations. As a result, statistics today are largely unreliable and significant discrepancies are quoted for a wide range of key indicators.

Data deficiencies cut across all sectors, from population censuses to estimates of drinking water supply, malnourishment levels, deforestation rates, biodiversity inventories, volume of fish catch, agricultural and mineral production and exports.

Furthermore, surveying and mapping of natural resources is partial, outdated and incomplete. Although some investment has been made recently to install modern environmental observation infrastructure , mainly particularly meteorological and liminographic stations – and ad-hoc surveys have been carried out (wildlife, forestry, hydrogeological), data collection remains grossly inadequate and underfunded.

Furthermore, where data exists, it is often inaccessible due to archaic storage methods and the lack of a harmonised information management structure.

Without the prerequisite baseline datasets and the capacity to carry-out long-term measurement of key parameters,it is impossible to make informed decisions and design effective environmental management.

Solution

After the Congo on lessons learned. To overcome this limitation, there is a clear need to broadcast and popularize positive environmental management experiences and accelerate the systematic upscale of successful models into national program.

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