Why Congo’s Most Famous National Park Bets Big on Crypto

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This is why the park is a vital source of charcoal, or makala in Swahili, and food, even though farming, fishing, hunting and logging are illegal. The park’s resources are stripped with regularity: between 2001 and 2020, Virunga have lost almost 10% of their tree cover, and de Merode estimates that $170 million of Virunga trees and ivory are lost each year. But the alternative for the locals is not being able to pay the local warlords or starve to death. These are perfect conditions for corruption.

“The Congo is a bewildering place to make moral judgments.”

The Congo is a bewildering place to make moral judgments, says Adam Hochschild, the author of King Leopolds Ghost, which chronicles Belgian monarchs tearing apart 19th-century rule. The Congo is further complicated by its vastness, people who speak hundreds of languages ​​and the colonization that was done for the purpose of extracting wealth, he says. In these circumstances, it is very difficult to have a just and equitable society.

Congo has almost as many displaced people as Ukraine and decades of conflict despite decades of UN peacekeeping. Most of the park’s stolen profits go to armed rebel groups, which some locals join for lack of better options. Some are relics of past wars, including the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Others may be linked to the Islamic State. The biggest is the M23, a Tutsi-led group so well armed that the UN says Rwanda backs it. (Rwanda denies this, but its economy is heavily dependent on Congolese resources.)

As a result, Virunga is perhaps the only UNESCO site that regularly buries its staff: more than 200 rangers have been killed since 1996, an average of one per month. Cherubin Nolayambaje, who spent eight years as a ranger, calls it the most dangerous job in the world.

More than 200 park rangers have been killed since 1996, an average of one per month. Here, rangers on patrol early in the morning look for animal traps, illegal fishing activities and logging.

BRENT STIRTON/GETTY IMAGES

Nearly 800 Virunga rangers, including about 35 women, often encounter armed rebels in the park and civilians who farm or live there illegally. Many locals don’t even know the boundaries of the parks, adds Samson Rukira, an activist from the nearby town of Rutshuru. While conservation requires community involvement to solve problems, he says, we’re in areas that aren’t secure, and that may mean rangers can’t dialogue.

De Merode is sensitive to community complaints that individuals are being denied access to the vast riches of the parks. Hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people are incurring what we hope will be a short-term cost in turning this park into a positive asset. If we fail, we do more harm than good, he says. But we believe passionately that it can be revolved around this ecosystem, this park.

Its plan to achieve this is based on the three hydroelectric plants that the park has opened since 2013, in Matebe, Mutwanga and Luviro; a fourth is under construction. If you can power your house, the theory goes, you don’t need to cut down trees to cook. Electricity supports new jobs and businesses, such as coffee cooperatives and the production of chia seeds. And, of course, the Bitcoin mine.

This is the misconception we most want to correct: that Virunga is only about wildlife, de Merode continues. No, it’s about community through wildlife. Our role is to try to facilitate that. There is no way to practice conservation in one of the world’s most troubled countries without local support, he says.

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