Decentralisation, Urbanisation and Environmental Drifts in the Democratic Republic of Congo: The Challenges of Urban Governance, Resilience Mechanisms

Known as the world's second largest carbon and biodiversity reserve after Brazil, the DR Congo has initiated since 2006 a process of decentralisation which promotes positive values in terms of the distribution of powers between the central government and the provinces and between the provinces and the decentralised territorial entities (ETD) but whose collateral effects in terms of environmental drifts risk calling into question the expected advantages of this process. The unbridled creation of Cities and Communes (rural in particular) driven by decentralization has made it possible to go from 31 to 67 cities, i.e. 46.2% increase, and 117 to 503 Communes, i.e. 232.6% increase between 2011 and 2013. The common denominator of all these ETDs remains the weak governance capacity of all public domains and especially their dependence on nature to cover energy and housing needs. The environmental drifts caused by the challenges of urban governance will be accentuated in the new cities created during the process of implementing decentralisation in the DRC in the sense that they are for the most part located in rural areas and deprived of resources and infrastructure (energy, water resources, comfortable housing, roads and drainage, etc.) to meet the needs of the inhabitants. The latter must resort to nature to meet their needs. The invasion of the countryside by cities of spontaneous generation by decentralisation damages the environment through: deforestation, floods, erosion, and more, thus becoming the daily lot of the inhabitants. The destruction of the environment then becomes an obstacle to sustainable development. The decentralisation reform supposed to promote sustainable local development would have become desolate in its creative implementation. Resilience mechanisms are possible if we stick to the respect of standards at the national, regional and international levels, in particular national and sub-regional legislation, the various mechanisms put in place by the World Bank within the framework environmental and social safeguards, as well as environmental protection mechanisms such as reforestation, the social responsibility of mining companies as well as the proper implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)+ process mechanisms crowned by citizen engagement and design of durable cities