Center for a New American Security

Perennially ravaged by civil war and resource conflict, the DRC is in the midst of confronting yet another natural security challenge, adding trial to tribulation. The region’s historically rich ecosystem is currently threatened by deforestation, the result of increasing demand for land by farmers and herders. Alone, competition for land between the two groups is contributing to regional instability, but it’s also diminishing biodiversity, a necessary prerequisite to ecological (and economic and national) security.

Photo: Ground view of a logging operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Courtesy of Scott Thompson and the World Resources Institute on flickr.