Biodiversity offsets: opportunities and challenges for managing cumulative impacts of large-scale land-based investments on Africa's forest landscapes and their biodiversity

In the Western Congo Basin, the Tri-National Dja Odzala Minkebe (TRIDOM) Landscape covers 178000 km² in south-east Cameroon, north-east Gabon, and north-west Republic of Congo. Almost 97% is covered by tropical rainforest and is globally important for the conservation of large mammals (elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees). TRIDOM is also an emerging iron ore province with 9 iron ore deposits currently being explored. Mining and associated infrastructure will, under a business as usual scenario, lead to the widespread fragmentation of this forest landscape. Developing these projects with no-net loss or net gain biodiversity objectives as a condition for access to finance offers opportunities but a landscape-level approach is needed to take into account, and mitigate, indirect and cumulative impacts. There are numerous technical challenges and policy implications to this as the development and implementation of a landscape-scale vision for conservation and development in the TRIDOM requires coordinated efforts by various sectors of government and mining companies, and legal and financial tools to secure long-term land-use rights across the various interacting sectors. In this context, there are lessons to be learned from the TRIDOM for other biodiversity-rich landscapes faced with large-scale land-based investments in mining, oil & gas or agro-industrial sectors. (Résumé d'auteur