Carbon sequestration and food farming at Ibi village agroforestry project, DRC

In the 1980s, a project to develop the land of the Batéké Plateau began, giving priority to social and environmental aspects. The Walloon Region finances the infrastructure from 1998 onwards.

In February 2011, Ibi Village was the first private project in the DRC to be registered as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which allowed it to sell carbon credits based on the carbon sequestered in the planted trees.

Since 2015, partner farmers have been cultivating a plot of land using the agroforestry method. After one year the cassava crops are harvested while the trees continue to grow. After 7 years, when they have stopped absorbing additional CO2, they are cut down. They are then transformed into charcoal and sold on the market in Kinshasa.