CCAO and DLDH have successfully delivered a community mobilisation project for climate and environmental justice in Maniema Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The goal: to place the rights of rural and Indigenous women at the heart of provincial and national climate policy.

In the villages of Maniema, it is women who farm the land, fetch the water and gather the firewood. And it is women who feel it first when the seasons shift, the harvests fail and the forest retreats. Yet when climate adaptation policy is decided, their voice is rarely heard — and the voice of Indigenous Peoples still less so.

This is the imbalance that Climate Change Africa Opportunities (CCAO), in partnership with DLDH, set out to correct. The community mobilisation project for climate and environmental justice for the women, rural and Indigenous populations of Maniema — initiated and carried through by the two organisations — has now been completed successfully.

From the field to the decision-makers' desks

At its core, the project is about advocacy. Working sessions were held with the competent provincial authorities to press a single, clear demand: that gender and the empowerment of rural and Indigenous women be built into every climate policy and every climate programme.

Every one — meaning adaptation, mitigation, but also access to technology and technology transfer. These are precisely the areas where women and Indigenous Peoples are too often absent from the design stage, even though they are the first to be affected at the delivery stage.

Behind that political demand sits a more fundamental claim: recognition of the land and environmental rights of women and Indigenous populations. Without secure tenure there is no lasting investment in the land, no long-term stewardship of resources, and no real economic autonomy.

Three levers, one shift

The project was delivered along three complementary dimensions.

1. Adopting Nature-based Solutions

The project promoted the adoption of Nature-based Solutions for climate change adaptation across the agricultural and forestry sectors. This approach — working with ecosystems rather than around them — was supported through hands-on accompaniment and capacity building for two audiences at once: women farmers on one side, and environmental professionals such as the technical forest protection services on the other. A deliberate way of bringing community knowledge and technical expertise into the same conversation.

2. Taking control of production

Producing is not enough; what matters is controlling what you produce and what you earn from it. The project therefore worked to strengthen the control exercised by women and Indigenous Peoples over their own production, freeing up the resources needed to grow their income-generating activities. Participants received targeted support on marketing and sales techniques for their products — the link in the chain where value is most often lost.

3. Shifting communities and decision-makers

The third lever is influence. The project supported advocacy at both provincial and national level for the land rights of women and Indigenous Peoples, paired with climate change awareness campaigns within the communities themselves. Pushing the issue up into the institutions, in other words, while anchoring it in the villages.

Adaptation and conservation: one horizon

The project's long-term ambition is twofold and inseparable: to strengthen the climate adaptation capacity of vulnerable young women and Indigenous populations, and to secure the conservation of the natural environments in which they live and work.

The two objectives are really one. The forests of Maniema will not be preserved against the people who depend on them, but with them — provided those people are granted the rights and given the means.

That is the bet CCAO and DLDH have placed in this eastern Congolese province. On the evidence of the project's delivery, it is a bet that now deserves to be scaled up.

AT A GLANCE

•  Led by: Climate Change Africa Opportunities (CCAO), in partnership with DLDH
•  Where: Maniema Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Who benefits: Rural women, vulnerable young women and Indigenous Peoples
• Pillars: Nature-based Solutions · Economic empowerment · Land rights advocacy
• Status: Project initiated and successfully delivered