In the Kahuzi-Biega National Park of the Democratic Republic of Congo, some actors portray the Batwa as ‘forest destroyers’, while others laud them as ‘forest guardians’. However, both framings divert attention from the underlying causes of environmental destruction, writes Fergus Simpson, Kristof Titeca, Lorenzo Pellegrini, Thomas Muller and Mwamibantu Muliri Dubois.

To create the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in 1970, the Congolese military expelled thousands of Indigenous Batwa people from their ancestral forests. Having previously lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they were pushed into squatter settlements at the edge of what became the park’s highland sector. Conservationists justified their actions by labelling the Batwa ‘deplorable’ gorilla poachers.

Since 2018, this framing has been used to justify heavy-handed law enforcement operations that forcefully removed Batwa groups from the park. These operations have led to widespread human rights abuses.

From the 2000s onward, the very idea that the Batwa threatened the park has been challenged. A group of Indigenous rights NGOs and activists have begun advocating on behalf of the Batwa, claiming they had been unjustly evicted.

These groups argue that the Batwa are ‘deeply motivated to protect the forest’ and so their removal was unnecessary from a conservation perspective. For these interest groups, the best way to conserve the park is to hand it back to the Batwa.

The case of the Batwa in Kahuzi-Biega National Park serves as a microcosm of a larger and long-standing debate about the role of Indigenous peoples and conservation. One side of this debate sees Indigenous Peoples as forest destroyers from whom nature must be saved. The other side sees them as forest guardians who can save nature.

Both perspectives share a common flaw: by placing the burden of conservation primarily on the Batwa, they obscure the fundamental and broader political economy of resource extraction, which is responsible for so much environmental damage.

Historical relations

The park is a major habitat for eastern lowland (or ‘Gauer’s’) gorillas, which was a key factor in its creation. Conservationists viewed the Batwa as a threat to the gorillas, ultimately leading to them to evict the Batwa from the park.

In the park’s highland sector, the gorilla population increased only slightly from the 1970s—when the Batwa were displaced—through to 1990. Between 1978 and 1990, surveys recorded an increase of the population from 223 to 258 gorillas. The Batwa’s absence had a relatively minor effect on gorillas.

The park’s situation, however, changed radically in the 1990s. In 1994, the arrival of Rwandan refugees in camps around its highland sector placed immense pressure on its resources. When the Rwandan Patriotic Army dispersed the camps in 1996, thousands of refugees fled through the park. Among them were remnants of the previous Rwandan government’s military and their Hutu youth militias. The latter established bases inside the park and became heavily involved in poaching gorillas and elephants. The situation worsened during the Second Congo War (1998–2003) when gorilla hunting intensified and conservation law enforcement temporarily ceased. 

As a consequence of these trends and regardless of the Batwa, between 1996 and 2000, the number of gorillas in the park’s highland sector plummeted from 245 to just 130. The gorilla population only started to stabilise after the Congo Wars officially ended in 2003, with a 2015 survey recording 213 gorillas in the highland sector. Notably, this increase coincided with park rangers restarting patrols and regaining a degree of control.

Simply put, armed conflict had a much greater impact on gorilla numbers than the presence (or absence) of the Batwa inside the park. This observation challenges portrayals that place the Batwa at the centre of events—whether as protectors or persecutors of biodiversity. Instead, it points to a much broader political economy of violent resource extraction that swept through the park.

The Batwa return to the forest

Following broken promises to provide them with land outside the park, around 2,000 Batwa returned to parts of the park’s highland sector from October 2018 onwards.

Rates of tree cover loss in the regions where the Batwa returned were significantly higher than in a region where they did not return. In area 1 – see below – where the Batwa remained in the park from 2019 to 2022, their continuous presence correlated with a striking increase in accumulated tree cover loss of 30 per cent over three years.

The Batwa’s presence had a significant negative impact on forest cover.

Park authorities placed the blame firmly on the Batwa, accusing them of destroying the park. Indigenous rights NGOs, however, rejected these claims as ‘unfounded accusations’.

Since returning to the park, the Batwa have taken advantage of economic opportunities arising from massive demand for charcoal and timber from nearby cities such as Goma and Bukavu.

Certain Batwa chiefs facilitated access to the park’s resources. These chiefs allowed people to harvest charcoal and timber in exchange for a small fee or a share of the goods.

They are just one of many actors contributing to the environmental destruction of the park. The broader network of actors includes local entrepreneurs who transport the park’s goods by boat and truck to markets in cities like Goma and Bukavu. Additionally, state agencies Including the national military, customary authorities, and non-state armed groups also profit from extorting taxes at various stages of the supply chain.

These observations challenge narratives that either paint Indigenous peoples as environmental protectors or as destroyers. While they might be useful narratives to gather attention, they oversimplify and are therefore bad premises for any policy intervention. Rather than fitting into these rigid categories, the Batwa’s relationship to nature should therefore be viewed as context dependent.

Such an approach can shift focus to the political economic and conditions that drive environmental destruction and shape the Batwa’s actions.

The blog post is based on the following research published by the authors:

Indigenous forest destroyers or guardians? The indigenous Batwa and their ancestral forests in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, DRC. World Development.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106818

Photo credit: Mwamibantu Muliri Dubois