A window into what we’re reading at the Stimson Center’s Environmental Security Program 

Community Forests Are the Frontline of a Minerals Race in the DRC (Mongabay) 

In the Democratic Republic of Congo’s copper-cobalt belt, local communities are establishing community forest concessions to secure land titles and prevent eviction by mining companies. Sparked by previous displacement incidents, these concessions allow communities to hold up to 50,000 hectares in perpetuity. This region holds approximately 70% of the world’s cobalt reserves, which has attracted intense competition from Chinese companies, the United States, and the DRC state-owned Gécamines to obtain minerals essential to high-tech, weapons, and clean energy industries. Between 2001 and 2024, 1.38 million hectares of tree cover in Lualaba and Haut-Katanga provinces were lost due to mining activities. 

So far, Haut-Katanga province boasts 20 concessions that cover 239,000 hectares. Communities in the region are developing environmental management plans that include sustainable agroforestry, reforestation, and controlled logging. Despite providing some protection, community forest concessions do face significant obstacles: mining companies obtain licenses on community lands without proper consent, weak enforcement of laws favors mining interests over community rights, and there is insufficient funding for environmental programs.  

READ | Going Beyond “Conflict-free”: Transition Minerals Governance in DRC and Rwanda 

New UN Report Warns of “Global Water Bankruptcy” (The Guardian) 

A new UN report warns the world has entered “global water bankruptcy.” Many societies are using water faster than it can be naturally replenished in rivers and soils, while simultaneously over-exploiting aquifers and destroying wetlands. As water systems are pushed past the point of restoration, 75 percent of people now live in water-insecure or critically water-insecure countries. Water-related conflicts also surged from 20 in 2010 to over 400 in 2024, and collapsing water systems pose grave risks for global food systems.  About 70% of freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture, and more than half of global food supply is now grown in areas where water storage is declining or unstable. 

Other factors are also at play. The global climate emergency is melting glaciers that store water, and the resulting whiplashes between extremely dry and wet weather makes water management increasingly difficult. Water now arrives in many landscapes in bursts that come at the wrong place and time, rather than in predictable patterns, creating difficult tradeoffs. The new report calls for a fundamental reset that includes cutting withdrawal rights to match degraded supply, as well as transforming water-intensive sectors through more efficient irrigation and less wasteful systems. 

READ | To Reduce Future Conflicts over Water, Reconceptualize “Shared Waters” 

Rare Prosecution for Amazon Defender’s Murder Could Set New Precedent (Associated Press) 

Five men now are standing trial in Peru for the killing of Indigenous Kichwa leader Quinto Inuma Alvarado in 2023. The victim was ambushed and shot while traveling by boat to his community in Peru’s northern Amazon after years making denunciations of illegal logging and drug trafficking in the region. It is a case that also highlights Peru’s failures in protecting at-risk defenders. Inuma was granted a security detail under a 2021 state protection mechanism, yet it was never implemented due to a lack of budget to do so.  

The trial of Inuma’s killers is being closely monitored as a potential turning point as well. Widespread impunity for violence against environmental defenders in Latin America makes itthe  world’s most dangerous region for such activists. At least 35 Indigenous defenders have been killed in Peru over the past decade, and legal experts say convictions that incur a life sentence could establish a precedent which demonstrates that thorough investigations that bring results are possible. 

READ | Protecting the Protectors: Environmental Defenders and the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding