For the past few years, the governments of Rwanda, through the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Uganda, through the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), and the Democratic Republic of Congo, through the Congolese Institute of Conservation of Nature (ICCN), have been trying to harness tourism and conservation as key pillars towards sustainable development around the Virunga Massif.

In Rwanda, through its outreach programme, the Tourism Revenue-Sharing (TRS), RDB donates a portion of revenue accrued from wildlife-based tourism to assist local communities living adjacent to national parks in the construction of schools, dispensaries, and water supply, among others.

Essentially, tourism revenue sharing (TRS) programmes promote tourism development and ensure that local communities enjoy tangible benefits from the industry while participating in wildlife conservation.

Through the initiative, over the last 18 years, more than 400 community projects have been completed, including hospitals, schools, business development centers and water supply systems to facilitate access to clean water. These projects directly benefit the people living around the parks.

However, while these efforts have to some degree succeeded in making the life of the local community living around the parks better, and promoted environmental conservation in the process, still these efforts hampered by other factors like poverty that still need to be tackled for conservation and sustainable development to be fully realised.

NGOs around Virunga massif

That’s why several Non-Governmental Organisations have sprung up with different programmes to fill the gap in promoting tourism, conservation and community development around the Virunga massif, straddling Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and supplement the governments’ efforts.

In the DRC, the Congolese war generally is described as the most severe humanitarian crisis since the end of the Cold War. It caused immense suffering, destruction of economic and social infrastructures and massive displacement of people. The crisis attracted also several humanitarian organisations, of which several settled in Goma.

Many of them aim to improve the livelihoods of the local communities through the now thriving tourism activities in Goma and promote environmental conservation.

The organisations are also engaged in programmes like sustainable agricultural activities, promotion and marketing of handcrafts products made by the local women, family exchange programmes, water conservation and sanitation programs, housing scheme, among others.

Greg Bakunzi, a tour operator and one of the partners of the Virunga Community Programs through his Red Rocks Rwanda, a cultural exchange centre, says their major aim is to see development of tourism, conservation and sustainable development around the Virunga massif.

For example, the tour operator observes that though restricted access to natural resources is an important mechanism for ensuring that resources are not over-used and also fragile resources are not disturbed, many people living around the national parks still don’t appreciate this fact.

“It should be noted that although some of them may respect restricted access, poverty forces them to demand access to protected resources. In a bid to ensure that local communities fully appreciate and understand the issue of restricted access to protected areas, apart from sharing of the revenue, the local community should also be engaged in different economic activities that improve their livelihoods, and this is what we’re basically doing,” says Bakunzi.

Main goals

The main goals of Virunga Community Programs and Red Rocks Congo programs are to connect sustainable tourism, environmental conservation and community programs around Virunga chains, Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park through initiating viable projects like bee-keeping, agro-tourism and small animal rearing within the entire Virunga massif that would improve socio-economic status of the local communities and help in conservation.

Encroachment on gorilla habitat

Encroachment on gorilla habitat range and ecosystems primarily by humans in search of land for agriculture, the Virunga region is surrounded by heavy population densities thus many people depend on natural resources such as water, forests and plant species. Most of these resources are found in the park thus Virunga Community Programs say it’s relevant to enfranchise communities neighboring gorillas in form of equal economic opportunities so as to reduce the strain put on gorilla habitats.

Poaching around Virunga massif

Poaching is another critical threat involving hunting and killing of gorillas plus other wildlife. This illegal activity used to be rampant during civil unrests in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda during the 1990’s. Many mountain gorillas were killed and their populations significantly reduced. Today strict rules and laws have been enforced by the respective governments that share the massive Virunga region as has yielded increasing.