The nearly 150,000 hectare KWR is located in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) along the western shores of Lake Tanganyika. It forms the core of a conservation landscape composed of montane rainforest and savannah woodlands centered on the Kabobo Massif, a 100 km mountain range that is one of Africa's most biodiverse places. The area also forms the largest forest and water catchment on Lake Tanganyika, making It as critical source of freshwater to local communities, and plays a key role in sustaining the health of fisheries in Lake Tanganyika. The hydropower dam that provides Kalemie city with its power is also located in the area. Thus, the natural ecosystems of the Kabobo region provide critical services to some 300,000 people, within and outside the Kabobo region itself.

Despite its importance, the Kabobo region faces significant threats including artisanal mining, growing charcoal and timber demands from cities and towns, and migration into the area to escape conflicts elsewhere. Civil insecurity in the region, and much of the rest of the eastern DRC, has allowed illegal activities to flourish, and limited the ability of legitimate authorities to exercise oversight. The effects of these threats are exacerbated by local conflicts over access to natural resources, which thrive in a setting where governance is weak and land tenure ambiguous.

Illegal and illegitimate taking of land and natural resources has had an especially severe impact on the Batwa, an indigenous group numbering approximately 6,000 people. The Batwa account for about 20% of the population of the Kabobo Massif, and reside in 37 villages, some of which are exclusively Batwa and some of which are also home to Bantu people. The Batwa are locally renowned for their ecological knowledge, and their active stewardship of the forest has been an important factor in maintaining the integrity of the area's natural ecosystems. They are especially vulnerable to land and resource grabbing, because their way of life depends heavily on the direct use of natural resources. Also, they are socially and politically subordinate to the Bantu population, which places them at a distinct disadvantage as they try to defend their land and resource rights.

The participatory planning process leading up to the creation of the KWR provided a structure to ensure that all voices were heard. This allowed the Batwa to engage with other actors on a more equal footing than otherwise would have been the case, and resulted in a consensus delineation of the area's external boundaries, and a set of internal land use zones to structure resource use.

The process also ensured that the Batwa became active participants in each of the four community conservation committees, which have been consolidated from 44 smaller groups. These committees are guiding development of the locally appropriate governance systems needed to establish and enforce legitimate resource use rules. Representation and active participation by local stakeholder groups, like the Batwa, in the governance of the KWR ensures that their interests and concerns are adequately reflected in the rules that are put in place to determine who has access to reserve resources and how much legitimate users can take of any given resource over a given period of time.

In 2016, the DR Congo passed a new Forestry Law, which provides a legal framework for community tenure and management of forest lands, based on creation of Local Community Forest Concessions (CFCL). This provides an opportunity to apply the participatory principles used to create and manage the KWR to the creation of CFCLs in the area surrounding the reserve, and extend community management across much of this important landscape.