While the main warring parties — M23 rebels and Congolese national army — struggle to silence their weapons in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, despite continuing peace initiatives, the region’s civilians continue to suffer from the conflict as the M23 still occupy North and South Kivu provinces.

The region’s abundant biodiversity is also enduring an intense fallout from the fighting, but a new global conservation-investment plan just introduced at the annual United Nations climate change conference could help restore some of the damage in the eastern Congo’s most important ecological asset.

According to Global Forest Watch, an online network that monitors the health of forests, the Virunga National Park, located in Albertin Rift, North Kivu province, has experienced major forest loss in the last two years amid the war in the region.

Virunga is the oldest national park in Africa and the most important in biodiversity. According to park officials, the southern part is covered with dense forests, savannah in the center, alpine forest in the north and steppe in the east. The area is also rich in peat bogs. Alerts received by Global Forest Watch say that in November 2023 alone, 964 hectares, or about 2,382 acres, were deforested in Virunga, which is also a Unesco World Heritage Site.

In 2024, the Congo lost 1.2 million hectares of natural forest overall, about 3 million acres, equivalent to 820 million tons of carbon emissions.

Bienvenu Bwende, a communications officer at Virunga National Park, told PassBlue that when fighting broke out in eastern Congo in November 2021, among the Rwanda-backed M23, other militias and the Congolese national army, the park evacuated its workers, including some rangers, for their security. The vacancy worsened damage to the park after residents in the area began pilfering natural resources in Virunga and armed men became active in the region.

According to a report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the illegal charcoal trade in Virunga is valued at more than $170 million annually, providing a primary source of income for armed groups.

The initial destruction of Virunga began decades earlier, when Opération Turquoise, a military plan, was launched for two months in 1994, under a United Nations mandate during the Rwandan genocide to establish a “protected humanitarian zone” in eastern Congo (then known as Zaire) for people fleeing the murderous rampage in Rwanda. Thousands of families and armed militias found refuge in and around the Virunga park, making it increasingly insecure.

Decades later, the loss of the Virunga forest raises concerns to many environmental activists in the region. They say that the systematic damage of the park and other protected areas in the region is happening without much outcry. Virunga’s deterioration is not included, for example, in the various recent negotiations to end the war in eastern Congo, including those led by Qatar with the United States.

“We must repent,” Olivier Ndoole of the Congolese Alert for the Environment and Human Rights, a nonprofit group in Goma, the regional capital in eastern Congo, told PassBlue.

“Whether it be leaders or the governed, rebels or defense forces, I believe we have been irresponsible. We have failed in our duty with regard to our commitments to climate justice,” he said.

Protected areas like Virunga Park, he added, should enjoy a regime of neutrality in times of both peace and war. The park and local groups are taking initiatives to restore some of Virunga’s forests but not at large scale.

“When you look at the park’s flora and fauna, it’s an explosion of biodiversity,” Bwende said. “Some even say that what we have here would constitute several parks elsewhere. We have volcanic ranges, we have a lake, we have the third highest peak in Africa with the summit of Rwenzori, and all kinds of vegetation.”

The M23 armed militia that still controls important swathes in eastern Congo is trying to keep residents out of the park. “People are not allowed to go into the park to cut down trees, make charcoal or poach. If they destroy the park, we will have problems related to the environment and famine,” Prince Mpabuka, the M23-appointed administrator of Rutshuru territory, located in the heart of the Virunga park, told PassBlue.

John Tsongo, an environmental activist in Goma, noted that the influx of internally displaced people from the most recent war have set up camps around Virunga, contributing to its destruction.

“Many camps for war refugees were set up around Goma, especially near Virunga National Park,” he said. “They had no firewood and no shelter, so they easily went into the park to cut down trees. That’s how many hectares were deforested, especially eucalyptus.”

Yet, a new plan for rescuing some of the world’s most important forests could help save Virunga as well.

At the launching of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a global investment fund, in Belém, Brazil, before the UN-led climate conference (COP30) opened on Nov. 10, UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke about the multitasking that tropical forests perform to “breathe life into our planet.”

“They protect water and soils, store and remove billions of tonnes of carbon, regulate rainfall, shape weather patterns across continents, and sustain millions of people,” Guterres said.

The new fund, which focuses on forest conservation, has so far received $5.5 billion in pledges from Norway, Indonesia and Brazil as well as smaller amounts from France, the Netherlands and Portugal.

“We are dangerously close to a tipping point that could push these ecosystems beyond recovery,” Guterres added. “Crossing that line would unleash droughts, fires, and biodiversity loss on a scale humanity cannot control. We have pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.”