South Kivu, in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, exemplifies the mutually reinforcing relationship between environmental degradation and violent conflict. In 2013, the province lost 46.8 kha of tree cover– a fivefold increase from the previous year– while conflict events surged from just 6 to 270 by 2024, a sobering 4,400% rise that underscores its spiraling instability.
In 2025, over 7,000 people have been killed across the eastern DRC as the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) and its armed wing, the Rwanda Defence Force-backed M23 rebel group, seized Goma in late January and Bukavu in early February. These advances portend intensifying resource-driven violence among the state, civilians, and nearly 120 armed groups in South Kivu.
While the AFC’s ambitions extend beyond mineral control, competition over the DRC’s [$24 trillion](https://gsphub.eu/country-info/Democratic Republic of Congo#:~:text=Most of the raw mineral,and considerable amounts of cobalt.) in “conflict minerals” has fueled nearly three decades of violence in the east. Demand for tin, tantalum, tungsten (the “3Ts”), and gold has surged due to their critical role in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storage. China, the EU, and the United States remain the largest importers, with multinational corporations dependent on Congolese supply chains despite persistent human rights and environmental concerns. As demand for lithium-ion batteries and semiconductor components accelerates due to artificial intelligence advances, so too do incentives for armed groups to violently contest mining areas. This conflict, in turn, drives deforestation in the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest and a critical carbon sink absorbing 10% of global emissions.
The capital Kinshasa, 1,500 km west of South Kivu, struggles to govern the province amid severe logistical constraints. Without railway infrastructure, troops and supplies must travel on poor roads often impassable during rainy seasons. Weak regulatory oversight in gold and timber production enables local officials, the Congolese army (FARDC), and militias to siphon state revenues, fostering parallel economies that systematically undermine governance. Along the eastern border with Rwanda and Burundi, dense mountainous forests conceal militant movements, while short cross-border supply chains facilitate armed group operations. Enabled by systemic corruption and weak state authority, South Kivu remains enmeshed in a cycle of violence and resource exploitation with global ramifications.
Key Trends:
Addressing any one of these issues in isolation– whether through conservation, counterinsurgency, or economic regulation– invites failure. The Congolese government can take three evidence-backed actions to alleviate conflict and environmental pressure in South Kivu:
The DRC has endured decades of persistent violence abetted by its neighbors, seeking ethnic predominance and resource control. Spurred by alliances and rivalries that traverse national borders, violence in the DRC frequently invites cross-border operations by foreign groups. In the wake of mass displacement into the eastern DRC (then Zaire) following the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (RPF) halting of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the First Congo War (1996-7) erupted when the Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed AFDL rebelled against Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko. Seko’s successor, AFDL leader Laurent Kabila, failed to consolidate popular support while alienating both Rwanda and Uganda, his former backers, with short-sighted entreaties to the Hutu-led Interahamwe and Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan, respectively. One major outcome of this ethnically driven tension was the persecution of the Banyamulenge and other ethnic groups labeled by Seko and Kabila as "non-Congolese," who have endured ongoing violence from both domestic and foreign armed groups. The ensuing Second Congo War (1998-2003), often referred to as “Africa’s World War” due to the involvement of nine countries and 25 armed groups, resulted in 5.4 million deaths, making it the deadliest conflict since 1945.
Figure 1 – Conflict Events and Mining Activity in South Kivu (2013-2024)
The Second Congo War exhibited multiple geostrategic dynamics that continue to shape conflict in South Kivu and the eastern DRC broadly. These include: (1) exploitation of informal mining and timber producers by a range of actors, from the Congolese army to non-state militias and state actors acting quasi-legally; (2) the use of resource profits to finance conflict operations; and (3) the Congolese government's limited ability to project power across challenging terrain and maintain control over remote regions with poor connectivity.
Figures 1 and 2 underscore how each of these three dynamics play out in South Kivu’s restrictive geography.