page_title: Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
section_title: Soil erosion
hierarchical_section_title: Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo / Consequences of deforestation / Soil erosion
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: fr:Mont Mangengenge, fr:Kinshasa, RDC, summer 2003 Personal picture, I set it in public domain.
context_page_description: Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a significant transnational issue. In the DRC, forests are cleared for agricultural purposes by utilizing slash and burn techniques.
  Aside from the visible depletion of resources, deforestation of the DRC also leads to a lost habit for the mountain gorilla among other rare species like the okapi, resulting in decreased biodiversity, soil erosion, and contribute to climate change.
  Since 1990 till 2015, the rate of deforestation in the DRC has remained constant at 0.20%, which equates to the loss of 311,000 hectares, or roughly 1,200 square miles, annually. This amounts to destroying forests the size of Delaware every two years. The fact that the rate of deforestation has remained constant over more than twenty years is misleading as one might believe that government or non-government organizations interventions have been responsible for the decline, but reports indicate otherwise.
context_section_description: Soil erosion happens in the deforested areas of the DRC, which are mostly in the southern part of the country; and it is most intense in populous cities such as the capital Kinshasa, territory of Luberu, and the surroundings of Kasenyi near southern Lake Albert. Soil erosion has a mixture of causes, including mismanagement of land, climate change, intensive agricultural practice, and lack of adequate protection infrastructure/maintenance for soil.
  Land mismanagement is a substantial problem in the DRC and contributes to soil erosion.  The cities in DRC have not adopted any new urban plans for decades and now many cities are facing fast urban sprawl which is a major contributor of the deforestation in these areas (via fuelwood and charcoal collection). The city of Kinshasa, for example, is still using the physical environment created from the colonial era but it now has a population of more than 10 million people.
  Urbanization is typically associated with more opportunities for employment and economic growth. This is not the case in Kinshasa and other cities in the DRC which are experiencing population stress largely due to migrant refugees coming from the armed conflict zones in the east.  As noted by Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, the only region in the world where urbanization is associated with negative economic growth in the world is Sub-Saharan Africa.
  Due to inadequate infrastructure to accommodate their surging population, informal settlements on the outskirts of the cities are being formed. Many refugees deforest the unexplored land and build squatters settlements, or slums, on the steeps, exploiting many hilly areas. Development of these hilly lands not only increase the rate of erosion but also put the inhabitants vulnerable to the risk of landslide, adding factors of insecurity to the already underprivileged community. Although these settlements are illegal, the government does not have the will nor power to form urban plans, strategies to stop people from migrating, or to regulate the migrants' behavior.
  Without formal sources of income, these communities practice slash-and-burn agriculture, resting the land only every 2 to 3 years, to make their ends meet. With intensive agriculture, the lands are quickly depleted and desertified. Without letting the forest regenerate, farmers cut down new forests and in turn expand the amount of desertified land which is very prone to erosion.
  Although the problem of soil erosion in these city areas are known, little has been done to address the issue. Few small-scale projects have demonstrated an ability to help protect the integrity of the soil, but no scalable ones have been implemented due to lack of funding. Soil erosion is also considered such a serious matter that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has sent agents to inspect the reactor in Kinshasa and concluded that soil erosion could soon threaten the safety of nuclear power plants.
  Landscape change can also alter weather patterns. The Congo basin used to be covered by rainforest, yet an expansion of savannah in Central Africa has extending the sandy soil area because of deforestation. The generation of oxygen by forest are contributors to the rainfall system. However, deforestation has disrupted the ecosystem services and created an eco-climate issue. The rainfall pattern in this area has been characterized as a heavy rain season and a severe dry season. The missing forest has intensified the already dichotomy climate, increasing the episodes of violent rainfall and extending the dry season. With long dry spells, the vegetation in these areas can become sparse. This results in no soil protection during the rainy season and creates more soil erosion problems.
caption: Deforestation leads to serious problems with soil erosion as can be witness at Mont Mangengenge near Kinshasa.
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