The transnational management regime of the Virunga Conservation Area across the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan borders: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The Virunga Transboundary Conservation Area (VTCA) shown in Figure 1 is a 434 km² natural heritage/wildlife complex. One part comprises a 240 km² portion of the mountainous Virunga National Park, which was created in 1925 inside the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As such, Virunga National Park, with a total land area of 7,800 km² (Figure 2), is not wholly located in the VTCA. The main focus of this paper is the Mikeno sector of the park, an area of approximately 250 km², which happens to be part of the VTCA territory (Figure 2). The entire park was placed on the World Heritage List in 1979 and pronounced a World Heritage Site in Danger in 1994. The second part of the VTCA is an alpine area covering some 160 km² of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, which was created in 1929 and designated as a Biosphere Reserve (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The third part, also mountainous, is a 33.7 km² area within the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP) in Uganda (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The MGNP was established in 1964 as a reserve to protect the mountain gorilla and it was inscribed onto the World Heritage Tentative List in 2007. This ‘three-in-one’ natural heritage area lies between 1°21′50′′ S and 29°38′17′ E.

Introduction

The Virunga Transboundary Conservation Area (VTCA)

The Virunga Transboundary Conservation Area (VTCA) shown in Figure 1 is a 434 km² natural heritage/wildlife complex. One part comprises a 240 km² portion of the mountainous Virunga National Park, which was created in 1925 inside the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As such, Virunga National Park, with a total land area of 7,800 km² (Figure 2), is not wholly located in the VTCA. The main focus of this paper is the Mikeno sector of the park, an area of approximately 250 km², which happens to be part of the VTCA territory (Figure 2). The entire park was placed on the World Heritage List in 1979 and pronounced a World Heritage Site in Danger in 1994. The second part of the VTCA is an alpine area covering some 160 km² of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, which was created in 1929 and designated as a Biosphere Reserve (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The third part, also mountainous, is a 33.7 km² area within the Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP) in Uganda (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The MGNP was established in 1964 as a reserve to protect the mountain gorilla and it was inscribed onto the World Heritage Tentative List in 2007. This ‘three-in-one’ natural heritage area lies between 1°21′50′′ S and 29°38′17′ E.

Figure 1.

Location of Virunga Transboundary Conservation Area (The names and boundaries shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations). Source: Adapted from Maps of the World, 2016 and Williamson, 2008.

Figure 2.

The complete territory of the Virunga National Park and neighbouring contiguous parks (The names and boundaries shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations). Source: Author.

Figure 3.

Holistic location of Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda (The names and boundaries shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations). Source: Author.

As documented by the Greater Virunga Transboundary Cooperation (GVTC) in 2017, the VTCA is the richest part of the African continent in terms of vertebrate species, given that it plays host to 292 species of mammal, 890 species of bird, 135 species of reptile, 91 species of amphibian, 177 species of butterfly, 366 species of fish and 3,755 species of plant. More conspicuously, this vast conservation area is renowned for endemic, threatened and migratory species, including lions, hippopotamus, chimpanzees, baboons, monkeys, leopards, okapi, golden cats, crown eagles, buffaloes, lesser flamingos, vultures, Rwenzori sitatunga antelopes, elephants and many others. Crucially, the area is the last remaining habitat of the critically endangered mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), now on IUCN’s Red List of Endangered Species. The mountain gorilla is plausibly the key trigger for transnational collaboration.

The VTCA is also a refuge for biodiversity and high levels of endemism in the Albertine Rift of Central East Africa. The animal species in question have moved freely across what are now international borders among the three countries, and some species have arguably needed this larger landscape for millennia in order to sustain their populations, (Plumptre et al., 2007). However, this joint territory underwent partition following the scramble for Africa among the European powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884, during which the present borders of the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda were drawn up, along with several other African countries, based on European imperialism, (Rodney, 1973; Babatola, 2014). Koponen (1993, p. 118, 124) condemns this as a selfish work of official imperialism ‘… among holders of state power, i.e. sovereigns, top ministers and a handful of high officials in the major European countries…’ to address Europe’s own economic and political rivalry, and the unequal development of its industrial capitalism. Quite obviously, the Africans and their wildlife were neither represented nor accorded any say in that conference. Nevertheless, the natural ecological processes of this landscape have remained immune to the acts of that infamous Berlin conference to this day.

A historical perspective of the VTCA’s conservation management regime

Prior to the VTCA’s formal configuration in 2015, the three wildlife territories were managed as separate entities by the national wildlife authorities in each of the noted partner States, both in the colonial era and the first couple of decades after independence, (Lanjouw et al., 2001). As such, no distinctive transnational conservation management regime prevailed. Rather, it remained simply a possibility, hardly discussed by the three States. How exactly this conservation area kept going, with no clear transnational management regime until the recent signing of a formal transnational collaboration treaty in 2015, is worthy of consideration at this point. Since the partner States were largely responsible for the management of their own territory before the treaty, these can be examined on a case-by-case basis in the following sections.

Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

As mentioned earlier, Virunga National Park is a 7,800 km² natural heritage site that stretches from the Virunga Mountains in the south to the Rwenzori Mountains in the north, in the eastern part of the DRC, bordering Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and both Rwenzori Mountains National Park and Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda (Figure 2). It was created in 1925 by Belgium’s King Albert I as Africa’s first national park in his name (the ‘Albert National Park’), primarily to protect the mountain gorillas domiciled in the Virunga mountain forests, and became one of the icons of Belgian imperialism. A further colonial trophy was added when the park was expanded northward to include the Rwindi plains and the Congolese areas of Lake Edward and the Rwenzori Mountains (Figure 2).

After independence in 1960, the new Congolese State deteriorated rapidly, and so did the park. However, in 1969, President Mobutu Sese Seko began to take a particular interest in conservation, and the park was revitalized. In the process of Mobutu’s Africanization drive, the ‘Albert National Park’ was renamed ‘Virunga National Park’ and the first Congolese Wildlife Authority was established. In 1979, Virunga National Park was inscribed onto UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Since then, the park has been managed by the Congolese National Park authorities but principally by the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) and its partner, the Virunga Foundation. However, from about 1988, the park and the surrounding area in North Kivu province experienced near-constant violent conflicts characterized by widespread suffering, death, rape, displacement, sickness and starvation. Regrettably, innocent and highly dedicated park rangers also fell victim to this violence and lawlessness. For instance, in this period on the Virunga side alone, out of a park ranger strength of 500 men, 105 were gruesomely shot dead while on duty, (IUCN, 2017). Inevitably, the effects of these conflicts tended to spill over into the contiguous Mgahinga and Volcanoes national parks. The epicentre of the violence in the DRC has been in North and South Kivu (the Kivus), and to a considerable extent in neighbouring Rwanda; following a kidnapping incident near Goma in May 2018, the park was closed to visitors on 2 June 2018 for some time.

Volcanoes National Park, Republic of Rwanda

Volcanoes National Park (VNP), also called the Parc National des Volcans (PNV), is located in north-west Rwanda, along the borders of the DRC and Uganda (Figures 1, 2 and 3). It was established in 1929 as part of the then Belgian Congo’s Albert National Park. However, upon Rwanda gaining political independence on 1 July 1962 from Belgium, the Rwandan side of the Albert National Park broke away and it was named the Parc National des Volcans. Anxious to manage the park, and with little existing expertise, the new African leadership passed the governance of the park to the Ministry of Agriculture between 1969 and 1973. As a consequence, and in line with the predominant agricultural school of thought, about 40% of the park (approximately 100 km²) was decommissioned and cleared for the cultivation of pyrethrum, with the consequent reduction of habitat space for the growing population of mountain gorillas. This period is said to have caused some of the worst moments in the history of the park’s gorilla habitat, since the gorillas were forced to dwell at higher altitudes and in smaller areas, coupled with the loss of their bamboo forest habitat. It is no wonder that a census in 1970s yielded the shocking fact that there were barely 250 mountain gorillas still in existence in Volcanoes National Park.

Aware of earlier inadequate efforts to manage the mountain gorillas’ habitat, a dedicated American primatologist, Dian Fossey, founded the Karisoke Research Center with support from Cornell University in 1967. Her individual research programme and care of the mountain gorillas was a crucial factor in the drastic reduction of poaching, and drew their plight to the attention of the whole world. Ms Fossey’s efforts were complemented by a remedial gesture by the then President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, who withdrew administration of the park from the Agriculture Ministry in 1974 and placed it under the newly created Office Rwandais du Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (ORTPN), (Rwandan Office of Tourism and National Parks).

Since then, the park has been administered by ORTPN, which is overseen by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB). The mission of ORTPN is to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity in protected areas, together with promoting sustainable tourism. There are three national parks in Rwanda that constitute ORTPN’s main sphere of operation: Volcanoes National Park, Nyungwe National Park and Akagera National Park, and Ms Fossey became an influential link for international support. Tragically, however, she was murdered in 1985 by unknown assailants in her camp cabin inside the park. It is strongly believed that her death resulted from her stand against wanton internal and cross-border wildlife criminals who targeted the mountain gorillas, and who could best be tackled via transnational conservancy. Although the assassination of Ms Fossey was a major blow to conservation management, she was buried alongside the graves of 25 mountain gorillas killed by poachers, and since then, this burial site has galvanized stakeholders to work together in their protection and conservation efforts.

Incidentally, whereas the shifting sands of Rwanda’s political terrain and rising insurgency became problematic to conservation management efforts in the late 1980s, early 1990s and a couple of decades that followed, the current political climate has resulted in a somewhat conducive setting for some recognizable attempts at transnational conservation management along with partner States of Uganda and the DRC, with their attendant wildlife properties of Mgahinga and Virunga national parks, respectively.

Mgahinga National Park

As depicted in Figures 1, 2 and 3, Mgahinga National Park is the smallest of the three national parks in the VTCA. It derives its name from gahinga, which locally means a pile of stones cleared from farmland at the foot of the volcanoes. The park is located at a high altitude – between 2,227 m and 4,127 m – in a conglomeration of dense forests. Besides being a natural heritage property, Mgahinga is the part of VTCA that is cherished by the Indigenous Batwa as a corporate cultural heritage site, enshrining their hunter-gatherer customs, traditions and rituals of forest dependence. They perform different rituals at a number of places, such as caves, hot springs, swamps, rivers, hills, big stones and pits, (Fauna & Flora International, 2013).

Retrospectively, the British colonial administration deemed the VTCA worthy of a game sanctuary in 1930 to protect the mountain gorillas, which had roamed freely within the Virunga region since time immemorial. The park was placed under the technical management of the Uganda Game and Fisheries Department. The Department was established by the colonial government and it continued to operate right up to the mid-1990s. In 1991, the Park was gazetted as a national park on the orders of Uganda’s President, Yoweri Museveni.

For the purposes of management, the government of Uganda decided to merge the Game and Fisheries Department with Uganda National Parks in 1996 and formed the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). This followed the enactment of the Uganda Wildlife Statute, which was transformed into an Act of Parliament of Uganda in 2000. Thereafter, Mgahinga National Park, together with 9 other national parks, 12 wildlife reserves, 5 community wildlife management areas and 13 wildlife sanctuaries, came under the jurisdiction of the UWA. The UWA is mandated to guarantee the sustainable management of wildlife resources and administer wildlife activities in Uganda, both inside and outside the protected areas, together with managing the country’s tourism industry. With regard to the management and conservation of wildlife and biodiversity within these parks and sanctuaries from the onset, the UWA faced challenges of poaching, competition in the regional tourism market, human-wildlife conflicts and numerous wildlife crimes on both sides of the border with the neighbouring DRC and Rwanda, and this constituted a severe problem for all the three States Parties.

In a similar way to Dian Fossey in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, Ruth Morris Keesling, another American wildlife conservationist, dedicated her life and resources to the plight of the Mgahinga mountain gorillas. Born in 1930 in New Jersey, USA, and an alumnus of the University of Colorado, Ms Morris Keesling generously contributed to the repopulation of the mountain gorillas directly in the field and by equipping Makerere University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Bio-Security (COVAB). From 1986 to 2014, she continued the legacy of the late Ms Fossey by dedicating her energies, finances and time to continue the gorilla conservation throughout the VTCA. In 1996, she successfully initiated a collaboration with Makerere University. Furthermore, she financed an honorary lecturer position to build capacity in wildlife health management from 1996 to 2006, and went on to provide supplementary funds for selected Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (BVM) final-year students to carry out research and acquire skills in gorilla health. The graduates are now part of the vibrant team of mountain gorilla and other primate health management specialists in the region. Targeting mainly the VTCA, she also succeeded in negotiating the establishment of the Department of Wildlife and Animal Resources Management (WARM) in 1997 at Makerere University, with a commitment to provide supplementary budgetary resources for the running of WARM over the years (Makerere University, 2014).

Ms Morris Keesling succeeded in increasing the mountain gorilla population from 248 in 1986 to about 880 by the end of 2014, i.e. ten months before the signing of the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration Treaty on Wildlife Conservation and Tourism Development (GVTCT) (Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration Secretariat, 2015). One of the highlights of her numerous Virunga transboundary conservation achievements was funding the establishment of the Virunga Veterinary Center (VVC) in 1986, dedicated to research into caring for the gorillas and capacity-building in local veterinarians to handle gorilla health. Initially based on the Rwandan side of the GVCA, Ms Keesling’s conservation efforts expanded into the DRC, and eventually into Uganda. Subsequently, in recognition of this excellence in transnational conservation, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) by Makerere University (Makerere University, 2014). Through this, Ms Keesling’s efforts generated further interest from the UWA in the prospective transnational conservation management school of thought from the late 1990s until the 2010s. Sadly, Ms Keesling did not live to see the fruits of her efforts now enshrined in the fully formed GVTCT/GVCA. She died at her home in April 2018 (Summit Daily, 2018).

Origins of the collaborative Virunga transboundary wildlife conservation management regime

In the previous era of individualism, the governments of the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda each endeavoured to glory in the pride of managing the affairs of each of their contiguous national parks separately. However, some of the challenges they encountered, partly from outside their national borders, were the drivers for political exchange and the move towards transnational initiatives to protect and conserve the livelihoods of those parks.

Also, after the mid-2000s, local, regional and international technical experts increasingly persuaded the concerned States Parties to accept the fact that they were all dealing with faunal migratory species whose sovereignty and livelihood were independent of international borders or boundaries. Thus, the notion that it would be of benefit to them all if they were to manage the Virunga conservation landscape under a formal transboundary initiative became far more appealing to the three States Parties. This idea was reiterated and demonstrated by experts at a number of intermediate and high-level regional and international seminars, symposia, conferences and workshops, coupled with incidental publications in scientific journals and other periodicals.

Furthermore, encouragement from international stakeholder bodies, namely multilateral entities and NGOs such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the World Fund for Nature (WWF), Fauna & Flora International (FFI), the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) (a coalition of Fauna & Flora International and WWF), the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGF-I), the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project/Gorilla Doctors (MGVP), the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS), the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), etc. bore fruit, and the three States Parties embraced a number of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). All these agreements encourage a transnational conservation management regime. Their memberships of ten pro-transnational management agreements favourable to the VTCA are highlighted in Table 1.

Table 1. MEAs signed or ratified by the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda which led to transnational cooperation for the effective management of their wildlife sites in the VCA

These MEAs can be applauded for having become the corporate drivers of an ideological, conceptual, theoretical and contextual framework for the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda to envision a viable tripartite transnational cooperation initiative to cover the Virunga wildlife landscape. Although the MEAs do not offer precise descriptions of exactly how the day-to-day transnational conservation management regime initiative should operate, they introduced the three States Parties to general and precautionary principles, as well as clues to standards, policies, best practices, best value frameworks and attainable goals. The subsequent operationalization of this initiative was initially informal, first through communication among the technical authorities of the three contiguous parks of Virunga (DRC), Volcanoes (Rwanda) and Mgahinga (Uganda), together with their sister park, the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The parties understood their common purpose and destiny, initially to curb poaching and ensure the safety of the mountain gorillas. Thereafter, from about 2006, the park authorities collaboratively and inter-territorially built the necessary mutual trust and understanding, (UWA, 2011).

Looking back at this transnational capacity-building initiative, the UWA (2011) affirmed in a celebratory press release:

Based on the initial success of the informal collaboration between park staff, the three protected area agencies, i.e. the Congolese Institute of Conservation of Nature (ICCN), Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), working with various partners within the region, established the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC) as a mechanism for strategic, transnational, collaborative management of the Greater Virunga landscape.

Formalization of the transnational management regime for the Virunga Conservation Area

As affirmed by the UWA literature (2011) in the previous section, the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC) was formally established in December 2007 with a ‘December 2007 – December 2011’ four-year funding support of €4.1 million from the Netherlands through its embassy in Rwanda, in collaboration with the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (Greater Virunga Transboundary Executive Secretariat, 2010; Musasizi, 2011). With a head office in Kigali, the GVTC is made up of six sections: (1) the Regional Transboundary Forum; (2) the Summit of Heads of State and Government; (3) the Council of Ministers; (4) the Board; (5) the Executive Secretariat; and (6) the Regional Technical Committees (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Overview of the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration structure. Source: Author.

GVTC’s performance since its inception

Background

The GVTC was established with the purpose of promoting and upholding the sustainable conservation of the biodiversity of the entire stretch of the Albertine Rift, in which the VTCA is also located. The Greater Virunga Transboundary Executive Secretariat (2010, p. 1) presented the objectives for its formation as ‘a long-term conservation and socio-economic development through (1) strategic trans-boundary collaborative management and (2) equitable sharing of conservation benefits with local communities’.

From this solid ‘two-in-one’ objective, two key outcomes became the basis for the GVTC’s 2007–2011 first work plan, which the Greater Virunga Transboundary Executive Secretariat (2010, p. 1) further substantiated as follows:

(a) trans-boundary collaboration process (among others: the support, institutionalization of, and developing of a sustainable financial mechanism for the Trans-boundary Core Secretariat – T.C.S.) and (b) revenue sharing and conservation practices (among others: the evaluation of existing revenue sharing approaches, support of community tourism infrastructure and the coordination of the implementation of livelihoods and income generating projects, etc.).

Achievements

At the first meeting of the GVTC’s Regional Transboundary Forum, held in Kampala in October 2011, the Executive Director named the key significant achievement of the transnational collaboration since its inception as the repopulation of the mountain gorillas. This was affirmed by the Greater Virunga Landscape Annual Conservation Status Report (2016, p. 2) as follows:

By working together and taking stock of the effects in the 2016 ACSR, we have seen success in the fight against poaching and wildlife crime and improved conservation in the Greater Virunga Landscape.

The Greater Virunga Landscape Annual Conservation Status Report (2016, p. 5) further noted that there was ‘… a decline in the number of snares discovered and destroyed – dropping to 1,310 in 2016 from 4,240 in 2015’. Also, satellite imagery analysis showed that the rate of deforestation fell from over 100 km² in 2001 to an insignificant 15 km² in 2016. With regard to poaching, it became evident that the amount of ivory confiscated among the counties of the Greater Virunga Landscape had also dropped significantly – in Kampala alone, the amount of impounded ivory fell to 389 kg in 2016 from 2,813 kg in 2015.

Challenges

Being a border region drawn along natural features of great biological interest and high conservation value, together with huge mineral wealth attractive to rebel groups, the VTCA has incurred serious damage during the past 25 years. Apart from the obvious humanitarian tragedies, this has also had a detrimental effect on the last remaining mountain gorillas on the planet. The instability is rooted in a complex antiquity of colonial and post-colonial mistakes, consequent civil strife, cross-border suspicion and mistrust, competition for natural resources, insurgency and jungle law. These factors are also infused with politics of global neo-colonialism and intrigue associated with a craving among foreign and regional powers to access the DRC’s mineral wealth partly located in the VTCA and its periphery or buffer zone. Since the causes of these conflicts appear to be rooted in a multiplicity of colonial demographic transpositions, with consequences across the entire Great Lakes Region, it is important to include them in the scope of this paper, in order to appraise their origins and to examine the ways in which they are now problematic for the growth and operationalization of VTCA’s sustainable transnational conservation management regime. The next section explores this appraisal.

A complex history of incidents and mistakes

In hindsight, the damage to which the VTCA has been subjected in the past decades is a consequence of demographic transpositions, along with outbreaks of war and insurgency in the region. With regard to the latter, the damage is associated with the actions of troops, rebels, poachers and refugees, together with unscrupulous exploitation of its natural resources.

To date a multiplicity of conflicts, which seem to recur cyclically and go beyond humanitarian crises, keep threatening both floral and faunal species, habitats and human communities that depend on the VTCA parks for their survival. Thus, the VTCA’s governance systems operate in a tense setting. Its boundaries are encroached upon by surrounding locals and the refugee populations. Its habitats continue to be destroyed through overfishing and charcoal production, and its animals are poached for meat, ivory and the younger ones for pets. Destruction partly arises from the high human population density in the areas surrounding the parks, (Lanjouw et al., 2001). It is abundantly clear that most of the threats to VTCA’s ecosystem come from all these factors operating in its shared transnational landscape and its buffer zones.

Technical conservation management planning gaps among the MEAs

A critical reflection on the MEAs in Table 1 with regard to the governance of the VTCA is that they corporately envision the following benefits:

• 1. Fostering of a robust and overall transnational regulatory regime conducive to the VTCA’s sustainable management.

• 2. Nurturing regionally, bilaterally, multilaterally-centred environmental policies, laws, legislation, and/or protocols that empower the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda to forge synergies of best-value frameworks, policies and laws instrumental in the conservation/preservation of the VTCA’s biological diversity; endangered species of wild flora and fauna; migratory species of wild animals and avian migratory species, their habitats and migration routes, to ensure their favourable conservation status across their migratory ranges; protection of their probable outstanding cultural, natural or mixed heritage within its landscape; protection of plant genetic resources for food, agriculture and medicines; control of transnational movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal; transnational control of organic/inorganic pollutants, hazardous chemicals and/or pesticides; transnational control/mitigation of wildlife trafficking and poaching; and wetlands and their resources.

• 3. Proliferation of a corporate managerial, protective, planning, organizational, administrative and enforcement regime for attendant policies, laws, legislation, and/or protocols, and penalties in instances such as criminal activities, including fines, prison terms, forfeiture of tools used in the commission of a crime, as well as the fruits of the crime, and revocation of licences.

• 4. Propagation of mutual trust and corporate operationalization of fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from co-ownership and mutual utilization of transnational wildlife and other resources in and around the VTCA.

• 5. Inter- and intra-State Party coordination, effective control and prevention of malicious introduction and spread of pests and/or flora and fauna potentially problematic to the VTCA’s landscape.

• 6. Inter- and intra-State Party prevention and/or stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere against dangerous levels of anthropogenic interference with the VTCA’s climate system.

• 7. Inter- and intra-State Party cooperation in the control of activities detrimental to the livelihood of the VTCA’s ecosystems, such as prohibited land uses, encroachment, deforestation, conflicts/terrorist activities, etc.

However, while the MEAs are rich in referential text to acquaint the three States Parties with the above benefits, there is little detail as to how these initiatives might be implemented. Also, the procedures that can be adopted to make them function smoothly on a day-to-day basis, the safeguards, checks and balances, troubleshooting and intervention actions, and their implementation and improvisation, are somewhat elusive. In this regard, the complex antiquity of colonial and post-colonial mistakes, consequent civil strife, cross-border suspicion/mistrust, competition for natural resources, insurgency and jungle law, noted earlier, have tended to diminish the MEAs, rendering them virtually ineffective. In other words, despite the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda having endorsed or ratified most of these MEAs, and having made some earlier conservation progress, the destruction of the VTCA’s fauna and flora continues.

This ineffectiveness of the MEAs is worthy of further scrutiny. Although the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration Treaty on Wildlife Conservation and Tourism Development (GVTCT) has been in existence informally since 2007, and formally since 2015, the reality on the ground is that the joint management of its transnational sites has remained complex, indeterminate and frequently demanding (Manz et al., 2017). Due to political tensions emanating from past skirmishes, mistrust and mutual suspicion between the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, the actual management of the VTCA has tended to slip back into a state of compartmentalization into the three mother territorialities, which in itself constitutes a threat to the GVTCT.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the formal adoption of the GVTC took longer than expected, with the belated signing of the treaty in 2015. The procedure to fully institutionalize and operationalize the GVTC proved to be much more complex than initially assumed by all parties involved in the preparation of the ten-year Transboundary Strategic Plan for the period up to 2016 (Greater Virunga Transboundary Executive Secretariat, 2010). The process led to a hitherto unanticipated drafting of a transboundary treaty. In the same way as the Brexit turmoil resulting from Britain’s departure from the European Union, the whole process of negotiating the content and drafting of the treaty, and as well as lobbying the line ministers to draw up the supporting bills for adoption by the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan parliaments proved to be complex, indeterminate, conflictual and unpredictable. In some instances, the three States Parties were completely divided in terms of other regional and geopolitical interests (Sloat, 2018; Sartori et al., 2018).

Incidentally, as formal institutionalization took so long, collaboration between the three park authorities remained inadvertently irregular, informal and ad hoc. The prolonged shelving of the treaty constrained the comprehensive operationalization of the GVTC as a legal and authoritative entity. As such, the local park authorities remained powerless to take legally binding decisions on behalf of their member States, and most anticipated outputs of the GVTC that would normally have been straightforward remained shelved for a long time. For instance, the financing mechanism for the transboundary Collaboration Secretariat could not be developed in time in the legally required context. Decisions on large-scale funding were also often declined or postponed.

Cocooning, cold wars, counter-accusations, mistrust and inter-state suspicion

As nature abhors a vacuum, the three park authorities – the Congolese Institute of Conservation of Nature (ICCN), Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) – continued to go their own separate ways and to develop master plans in isolation for their corresponding parks, in a typically cocooned model framework. It is also not surprising that the UWA stuck with its own self-governing General Management Plan 2014–2024 for Mgahinga National Park (MGNP), (UWA, 2014a, b). Tensions run deep inside the managerial machinery of the Greater Virunga Transboundary Executive Secretariat; seemingly united, there are undercurrents of mistrust which permeate the culture and administrative ways of the three States Parties. There are differences in legal, planning and statutory frameworks, as well as policies, laws, legislation and protocols, financial matters and penalties for criminal activity. All this is aggravated by the different means of communication or languages in the partner countries, which further complicates managing the VTCA on a day-to-day basis, (Manz et al., 2017). Correspondingly, the management systems in each of these countries have tended to gravitate back to the pre-GVTCT days of individual national park authorities, where each of them also had to deal with internal conflicts. These include issues such as political interference, ambiguous financial management systems and a clash between conservation on the one hand and exploitation and theft of the heritage elements, together with corruption and a lack of transparent revenue-expenditure mechanisms, on the other.

It is also apparent that the MEAs were unsuccessful in eliminating the enduring suspicion between the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, due to past and present skirmishes, with each casting blame on the others for their individual vulnerabilities. Such a blame game does not go well for a sustainable transboundary conservation management regime.

Oil extraction versus natural/environmental/wildlife conservation

As confirmed by the Greater Virunga Landscape Annual Conservation Status Report (2016, p. 6), over 80% of the Greater Virunga landscape has hurriedly been portioned into oil concession blocks. The pattern of this rushed and haphazardly planned extractive activity, particularly in both the DRC and Uganda, is no different from the California Gold Rush of 1848 to 1855, (Clay and Jones, 2008). Since the DRC and Uganda are both signatories to the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, conflicts have emerged between sustaining the VTCA’s ecosystems and/or biosphere on the one hand and developing the oil extraction industry in and around the entire Greater Virunga landscape on the other.

Through their own rigorous independent social and environmental impact assessment (SEIA) initiatives, those organizations have empirically ascertained that this activity is liable to leave the local populations in danger from air pollution, lung disease and water contamination, jeopardizing the habitats of invasive species or causing habitat loss in VTCA’s fragile ecosystem, (GTCDR, 2015). From their SEIA biodiversity-sensitivity reconnaissance missions, the organizations have established that the whole Greater Virunga Landscape is critically biodiversity-sensitive, with the areas around Lake Edward being the most biodiversity-sensitive. In this regard, GTCDR (2015) also affirms that roads being built to facilitate operationalization of the oil extraction activities are already beginning to open up pristine areas, thereby exposing them to poachers. There is also the potential that the increased human population, attracted by the oil extraction industry, will proliferate cultures that may be incompatible with the ideals of sustaining VTCA’s ecosystems and environments.

Effects of high population growth, poverty and illicit socio-economic trade

According to the Annual Conservation Status Report (ACSR) (2015), cited in the Greater Virunga Landscape Annual Conservation Status Report (2016, p. 14), the Greater Virunga Landscape has ‘… the highest rural population density in Africa, ranging from 100 to over 1,000 persons per square kilometre…’. The consequences of this for the VTCA are clear. Human population pressure has subjected the communities adjacent to the VTCA to high levels of poverty and unscrupulous socio-economic survival mechanisms, including

• ‘... struggles between humans and wildlife, leading to retaliatory killing of wildlife; and charcoaling and associated illicit charcoal trade’.

Opportunities

A wealth of opportunities lie on the VTCA’s doorstep, but are currently underexplored due to the state of general insecurity. The following sections examine some of these in more detail.

Immense tourism potential

There is tremendous potential across all three contiguous parks (Virunga, Volcanoes and Mgahinga) for biodiversity-based enterprises, such as mountain niche products (high-value medicinal plants), as well as a great, yet currently underused, impetus for mountain tourism. There is also the opportunity for the local populations to earn additional income from tourism. It is therefore in the best interests of the three States Parties to put aside their past differences and come together to ensure absolute security in the VTCA in order for this potential to be unlocked.

Potential for financial support from the international community

In terms of financial support from development partners, several NGOs, multilateral bodies and private individuals and organizations are extremely interested in VTCA’s wildlife conservation. This is evident from the number of such entities already operating in the area, despite the numerous incidents of insecurity and loss of life, even of their own staff. Again, it is essential for the three States Parties to put aside their past differences and work together to guarantee security in the VTCA. This would, in turn, encourage other financial support for the area’s conservation agenda.

Potential for resource-sharing collaborations in public-private partnerships (PPPs)

Due to the ongoing poor relations between the three States Parties, PPP-led and eco-friendly enterprise supportive of VTCA’s conservationist agenda has not yet been fully developed. Some of the enterprises, such as hydro- or solar power production have the potential to mitigate the damage done to the VTCA by activities such as charcoaling. Other kinds of enterprise development include leisure and hospitality, hotels/motels, leisure and eating facilities, to name but a few. In order for this potential to be realized, the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda governments should endeavour to help supplement the GVTCT with strategic PPP-based action planning and development, and not mere rhetoric.

Exploiting the VTCA’s potential as a peace-building and conflict resolution tool

The VTCA is not often considered in terms of its potential to solve wider problems, particularly with regard to the critical need to address combative insecurity. Even though the VTCA is a natural resource, it is possible to weave the entire complex into a peacebuilding tool for pacifying the severely destabilized border landscapes of the Albertine Rift, in a manner akin to cultural diplomacy.

Through awareness-raising initiatives among the rebel groups, warring factions, belligerents and stakeholder communities about the benefits to all for winding up conflicts in and around the VTCA, this landscape can become the most practicable, affordable, viable and sustainable means for achieving lasting peace in this troubled part of the Great Lakes Region. Needless to say, the VTCA can be reinvigorated, revitalized and rekindled beyond its present state as the tool for peaceful co-existence among the three States Parties. There is an untapped opportunity for the VTCA to become the driver for ending the deprivation of secure incomes, employment, health, education, skills and training, happiness, infrastructure, housing and social services among the neighbouring communities, (UNESCO, 1983, 1997, 2010).

Conclusion

A prospective framework model for a sustainable transnational conservation management regime for the Virunga Conservation Area and beyond

In conclusion, a promising framework model for a sustainable transnational conservation management regime for the Virunga Conservation Area and beyond may be the best way forward, and could be adapted for similar properties in Africa and elsewhere. For this to happen, the challenges detailed above need to be overcome and the suggested opportunities should become mechanisms for value addition. The wise words of Kaiser (2017) in Manz et al. (2017, p. 5) are worth quoting in full:

… additional requirements with regard to international coordination processes must be met. This, of course, always takes effort, but the focus is on cooperation and achieving common goals, which acts as a driving force. It is about supporting each other to create something great together. Only together do the parts make a whole. And here, it becomes clear that this peaceful cooperation is very much in keeping with the UNESCO principle of bringing nations together, and forms a contraposition to the destruction of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Recommendations

In the same way that the 1972 Recommendation Concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage was added to the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage to provide further guidance on fundamental issues at the levels of regional development and national planning, this paper deems it a matter of urgency for UNESCO to work with other stakeholders to develop a procedural instrument, or set of instruments or guidelines, to accompany the pro-transnational MEAs sympathetic to an inherent transnational conservation management regime.

It would be profitable for the prospective instrument or set of instruments to highlight the following aspects, which are not catered for in the current stock of pro-transnational MEAs:

• The transnational heritage property management treaty to be equipped with a strong SEIA policy(ies), obliging concerned States Parties to demonstrate clear capacity for monitoring and implementation of the said SEIA policy(ies);

• How to kick-start a transnational cooperation for effective management of World Heritage sites;

• Possible transnational management scenarios and their alternatives, including hierarchical structure(s)/organograms, lines of authority and responsibility;

• Suggestions for scientific and technical, administrative, legal, financial systems that can make a transnational management enterprise function at its best, including possible public involvement;

• How a managerial transnational enterprise could function in instances of conflictual geopolitical interests of concerned States Parties, and also in instances of serious intra-State instability, corruption, mistrust, associated armed conflicts, poaching, habitat loss, disease and attendant insecurity;

• How managers of a transnational management regime can attract political attention, diplomacy, financial support, and regional and international law vis-à-vis their concerned States Parties to obtain environmental security, in order to prevent conflict, instability and unrest in and around the given transnational landscape;

• How transnational governance can be given judicial powers to institute severe penalties for ‘crimes against the environment’ and its attendant human and non-human features, particularly of high conservation value;

• Self-appraisal/evaluation mechanisms for a transnational enterprise; and

• Encouraging the adoption of alternative cooking energy sources for the local communities, such as hydro-power production and solar lighting, in order to cut down on deforestation.