North of the limits of the Lukutwe community forest concession, two armed soldiers protecting critical mineral mining operations stepped in front of Valery Kyembo and his visitors.

Wearing a bright orange vest with the logo of a reforestation project, Kyembo was guiding our journalists through a heavily deforested area in the copper-cobalt belt of the Democratic Republic of Congo, stepping around newly planted seedlings, when he was stopped by members of the FARDC, the national armed forces. Behind them stood a barrier to control access to a semi-industrial mine.

“We are visiting the boundaries of our community’s property,” Kyembo tried to explain regarding the expansion of critical mineral mining, before one of the soldiers brandished his automatic weapon to make him turn back.

The land in question is the Lukutwe community forest concession (CFCL), 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Lubumbashi, the second-largest city in the DRC. The concession is a titled property created in the mineral-rich area of southeastern DRC by village leaders who sought to protect their land rights and miombo forests against a growing wave of mining companies taking up lands.

Ten years ago, the displacement of nearby famers from the villages of Bungubungu and Shilasimba by Société d’Exploitation de Kipoi (SEK), a company owned by Australia-based Tiger Resources in search of copper and cobalt, sparked worry in Lukutwe village that their village could be next.

“That’s why when the environmental project came to us, we wanted to have our own titled land,” Kyembo said. Other surrounding villages have similar plans.

This region of the DRC, rich in copper and cobalt, is seeing increased demand from Chinese companies, the United States, the DRC state-owned company Gécamines and other international actors for minerals that power the high-tech, weapons and clean energy industries. The DRC holds about 70% of the world’s cobalt reserves. Straddling the provinces of Lualaba and Haut-Katanga, political analysts say geopolitics and competition by the U.S. with China for mineral access are also at play on the same lands used by local communities and miombo forests. U.S. President Donald Trump has made mineral diplomacy part of his approach to solving DR Congo’s long conflict in the east — looking for access for U.S. companies.

Read the full article about threats to community forests in the DRC by Didier Makal and Latoya Abulu at Mongabay.